Ignorance Without Arrogance

2-26-2012

2012-02-26T12:45:00.000-08:00

When February ends, we will have been in winter for 5 months. Not the calendar winter of course, but the winter where it’s cold, dark, and cold. In addition to that, it’s cold. The good news is that the darkness is receding. The bad news is that it’s still cold and stormy.

Yesterday, my class had our monthly Saturday Funday. We ate hotdogs, played computer games and yelled loudly in the gym. Man, those kids can yell. And for no reason that I could tell. They were playing a game of basketball/yelling. At least they had fun. Monica baked cookies for them in addition to the hotdogs. We kinda throw nutrition to the wind on our Saturday Fundays. Next month we’ll just set out a bowl of sugar cubes and gum.

Outside our front door.

Our middle school basketball team traveled upriver to Marshall for a basketball tournament. They were able to arrive on time Friday, but couldn’t make it back on Saturday due to a storm. The way the storm is going, they might have to stay in Marshall until Monday. It’s about zero degrees right now and snowing sideways, so visibility is about 500 ft. I do not envy the coach and chaperone who are stuck in a school with three other teams for two extra days. The kids will enjoy spending the weekend hanging out at the gym. The adults probably have a different perspective of the enjoy ability of the weekend.

Our spring break starts Wednesday of this week. Larry’s memorial service will be held Friday. We’re only going to be down for 5 days, but we’ll have a lot to do. It will be a bittersweet few days and I’m glad we’ll be there.

One of the things we will do when we are near stores is to stock up on a few supplies. With only a few months left until we leave for the summer, we don’t have to bring that much back with us. We’ll be going down with empty luggage and will check our bags on the plane for the trip back. Alaska Airlines offers two, free checked luggage for Alaska residents while flying into and out of Alaska. This will be much cheaper than trying to mail them up and wait for 2-3 weeks for them to get here. We’ll load up on some non-perishable items like soap, shampoo, and Breathe Right Strips. The commercial says they help with snoring, but Monica says I don’t need any more help. I’m not sure if they stop me from snoring, but those bruises on my back in the shape of Monica’s fists have disappeared, so I’ll keep using them.

Twelve more weeks mean that we are starting to make our summer plans. We are going to spend most of the summer in Oklahoma. We will make a trip or two to see family elsewhere, but we haven’t filled in the calendar yet. One thing I do know is that we are going straight to Vegas from here in May. We’ll see two distinct extremes in a matter of hours. The Yukon will still be frozen when we fly to the desert of Nevada. The only thing cold I want to feel there is the drink in my hand.

2-18-2012

2012-02-18T16:58:00.000-08:00

Tuesday evening we got the call we had been fearing: Larry, my stepdad, had passed away after a ten-year long battle with cancer. The last few months had been rough on him. The news was not unexpected, but it was dreaded. I wrote a few weeks ago about him and what he meant to me. Selfishly, it’s going to be tough not having him around. Even though I didn’t talk with him on a daily basis, the fact he was there to provide me advice was comforting. I’ve grown accustomed over the years to refer to my folks with just one name, like they’re one entity: MomandLarry. It will be strange calling just Mom.

Being away from family is one of the unfortunate circumstances we face by living up here. We knew that by moving up here, we were sacrificing the ability to leave at a moment’s notice. Even knowing that, it really doesn’t lessen the guilt of not being there. I kind of liken us moving up here to what the settlers had to go through when they moved out west. They left family behind, knowing they would never see them again. Of course, we are able to communicate daily via phone or Internet with our families. And, we don’t have to worry about our wagon train being attacked by surly bandits looking for a quick score. Or coming down with cholera. But we love gravy and we do have problems from time to time with running water and sewer. So, in our own little way, we are a bit like settlers.

Our usable daylight has been increasing dramatically. We are gaining over 6 minutes a day. More daylight means more time to be out riding on the tundra, including visiting the store in Emmonak. It has been nice having eggs in the refrigerator. And toilet paper in the bathroom. And paying $9 a bag for chips. It’s also warmed up, so it isn’t so painful outside. I’m able to make the ½ mile walk to school without bundling up like Ralphie’s little brother in ‘A Christmas Story’. At least I don’t have to wear long johns for now.

Monica and I will be traveling to Waterville for Larry’s funeral on the 2^nd of March. We will only stay for 5 days, but I’m glad we’ll be able to be there. For 32 years I’ve looked to Larry for his approval and asked for his advice. Now I’ll have to grow up and figure things out for myself. But, I think I’ll keep his number in my phone just in case.

2-12-2012

2012-02-12T11:34:00.000-08:00

A colleague shared with me last week that we had reached our 100^th day of school. I didn’t realize this day held any significance. He obviously did since he repeated himself, this time with more excitement. I think he was hoping that I would join him in his joy. Instead, all he got was a blank stare. All this meant to me was that we still have 80 days left. Now, if he had notified me that we had 2 days left till summer break, he might have gotten a kiss. I don’t think he was hoping for a kiss, but he seemed a little disappointed that I didn’t share his joy. I get that a lot.

Last week also began Monica’s first week as preschool teacher. She has 5 students who were excited, scared, and curious to begin school for the first time. A couple of them had older siblings, so they had been coached on what to expect. Monica really enjoyed meeting the kids and starting their routines for the rest of the year. Her classroom is across the hall from mine, so I peeked in her window to see how everything was going. It looked like she had been doing this for a long time. I guess her years of telling me what to do and how to do it are serving her well with preschoolers. Her first day started at my 100^th day. This doesn’t seem too fair.

Foxes vs Mustangs.

We also hosted an elementary basketball tournament this week. Marshall and Alakanuk came to play with us. Since the teams eat and sleep at the school, we were able to get several games in. We played four games Thursday afternoon/ evening and another three more Friday morning. The visiting teams usually don’t get a lot of sleep, so there were some tired kids when they flew out Friday afternoon. We had a shortage of refs so I put on the striped shirt and did one game. I had been a referee in my prior life, so I kind of knew what I was doing. Luckily, there were a few people in the stands that would shout our helpful hints as to how I was suppose to do it. The worst part was since I was not prepared to ref, I was not dressed for the part. They did have the shirt, so I didn’t have to wear my flannel. But, I was still running up and down the court in my Levis and long johns. I can recommend strongly not wearing long johns while running on a basketball court.

The weather has warmed up to the positive side of zero. That means we can get out on the snowmobile more often when we get the time. I took a trip up to Emmonak last weekend with others to do some grocery shopping. It was sunny and about 25, making it a beautiful day for a ride. This weekend was filled with a very informational workshop on making digital movies in our classrooms. This was done with video teleconferencing at the school. We had five schools from our district participate and I think we all learned quite a bit.

Proof that there is learning in my classroom.

This week I also was offered my contract for next school year. They offer them early up here because of the difficulty they can have finding teachers to teach out in the bush. And to get them to stay. I will sign it and return for next year. Monica and I truly enjoy being out here. Now that she has a job doing what she wants to do, it makes it pretty easy for us to stay here. We have a great school and great students and I don’t think they’re done teaching us yet.

Well, here’s to the next 80 days going as smoothly as the first 100. Some days it can seem like it’s all been in a row. I’m looking forward to head south at the end of the month to see Larry and Mom for 5 days. I know for sure I’m going to have a beer and a cheeseburger. Maybe more than once. Maybe more than once at the same time. I have two hands after all.

2-4-2012

2012-02-04T19:31:00.000-08:00

Larry and Mom sitting on the poop tube.

Larry Utzinger turned 70 last week. Larry has been married to my mother since I was 13 years old. He was the one who would wake me up before the sunrise to go duck hunting. He introduced my brothers and me to Chinese food. He taught me how to use my elbows when blocking out much larger players. He also was the only person to tell me not to listen to everyone else and follow my dream to play college basketball. I made the team and vividly remember seeing him sitting in the stands when we played in Lacy, WA. We lost, but that was ok. He pointed out what I did right and gave me advice on how I could improve.

Larry last summer at my brother's house in Chelan, WA.

Larry gave me some great advice during a moment in my life when I thought I had ruined it. That moment happened while I was a senior in high school. It involved: me, empty beer cans, parents coming home unexpectedly, being suspended from the football team, and cancelling homecoming. Larry was the school’s superintendent. Monday morning I was called into his office to face the consequences for my actions. Larry, the principal, and my football coach were waiting to chat with me. The coach was very upset because the rest of the season had to be cancelled. (We had a small school and a small number of players on the team.) I remember exactly how upset he was because he made a comment about how he wished I was 18 so he could legally kick my ass. I didn’t think it was appropriate to speak, so I didn’t point out that I was in fact 18. I just made sure I kept a desk or one of the school’s administrators between him and I.

Larry, Mom, Monica, and me.

After the others left the office, Larry asked me to stay behind. When it was just the two of us, I braced myself for a stern lecture about responsibilities and acting grown up. Instead, I received the most important advice I’ve ever been given. He said, “Don’t sweat it.” Huh? He said that I wasn’t the first person ever to do that and I won’t be the last. He explained that we all make mistakes, even big ones, but we have to keep living our lives. He explained that while it seemed big at the moment, people would forget about it. He told me not to worry about what other people wanted me to do and to live my own life. For good and sometimes bad, I’ve lived my life that way and have no regrets. Lots of great experiences but no regrets.

Larry also was the man who, in addition to giving me a bowl cut, accidently shaved one of my eyebrows off. I was in the 8^th grade. It took me a while to notice it, mainly because of how hideous the bowl cut was. When I saw it I was horrified. When I confronted him about it he just shrugged and said I was lucky both weren’t missing. For the next few weeks I learned a little bit about how to use an eyebrow pencil. Oddly enough, I also learned which color blush goes with my eyes. (Burnt rosebud)

Larry and Mom came up here to our place in Aug for a look at isolation. He told me he had always wanted to teach up here and needed to see what it looked like. They looked for two weeks and then went home. I am glad he was able to come up here and spend some time with us. He was able to see what it is like out in the bush and I was able to get some more advice about being a teacher. It was a great reminder not to sweat the small stuff. Happy birthday Larry, I’ll see you in a couple of weeks.

1-29-2012

2012-01-29T10:17:00.000-08:00

The cold weather continues, so our plans to travel on our snowmobile remain on hold. This winter has been much colder than last winter, but we have less snow. We do, however, have enough snow for my personal needs and desires. The snow and ice help flatten out the Tundra and it allows for easy walking. Our walk to school is shortened significantly by the cold weather because we can walk across the lake instead of going around. The snow is very dry and compact, making it sound like we’re walking on Styrofoam. That’s neither a need nor a desire, just a cool byproduct of cold weather.

Students working hard on their projects.

We held our third annual science fair last Friday at school. I want to state from the beginning: I am all for science fairs. The problem is I am ill equipped in the organizational aspect of multiple individual projects being submitted to a group event. In other words, my classroom has been a zoo lately. And not a peaceful zoo full of docile animals that are easily herded and are in respectful awe of the zookeeper. It was more like a primate cage full of poop-throwing monkeys. No, throwing poop was not one of our experiments but it should have been.

When I first started asking kids what kind of experiments they wanted to do, almost all of them wanted to blow something up. I then asked them what kinds of experiments they wanted to do that do not include the words “explosion, stink, infection, fire, wolverines, dysentery, danger, or adult supervision required”. Their choices were severely limited after my list.

I have a couple of books with several different kinds of kid friendly experiments. We used these books to pick out our experiments. Unfortunately, they were not all teacher friendly. I would first have to do the experiment to see if it could be done the way it was described in the book. Then I would have the student execute the experiment with just me. Finally, they would perform the experiment in front of the class.

Some of the finished projects displayed in the gym.

Our biggest obstacle in doing the science fair, besides the fact they have me as their teacher, is our inability to quickly get supplies. We don’t have a Wal-Mart where we can grab materials as needed, so we were limited by what we had on hand. One of the experiments called for clear soda pop, like 7-UP. We could find only one can in town, so we had to do his experiment as quickly as possible before the carbon dioxide dissipated. Other experiments couldn’t be tried because of the same issue. I have already made a note-to-self to fill a plastic tote to send up for next year, filled with sciencey things.

The science fair was a huge success for the school. Almost all of the students participated. We had judges come in to judge the student’s presentations and award certificates and ribbons. The kids worked real hard on their projects and it showed. They constructed a tri-fold and then had to defend their experiment in front of the judges. I am very proud of them. Four of my students are going to the district science fair in March. This is a big deal, because they will fly to Mountain Village and spend the night. Some of my students have not been out of our village since they were born, so the reward is huge.

Battling the cold and battling a cold are now on my priority list since the science fair is over for another year. Monica and I are surrounded by piles of used tissues, making loud sniffing noises with our raw, red noses. I guess we’ll just have to wait till next year to see if the cure will be found at the science fair.

1-22-2012

2012-01-22T18:23:00.000-08:00

Some where between Nunam Iqua and Emmonak.

Well, the weather finally cooperated. It warmed up last weekend to zero and we made our maiden voyage to Emmonak on the snowmobile. We haven’t named the snow mobile yet, but I’m sure we’ll find one soon. Monica and I left at the crack of dawn: 10:30 Sunday morning. We were able to follow the trail that everyone uses to get up there and back. It took us about 45 minutes to travel the 20 miles one way. We were able to stay relatively warm despite the cold wind blowing in our faces. We did learn that minor adjustments in clothing make a huge difference in our comfort. And, knowing how to turn on the heated handlebars kept my hands fingers warm.

The main reason we headed up to Emmonak was to become familiar with the trail. A secondary reason was to get a few groceries. Emmonak has about 800 people living there. They have services that we don’t, mainly a store. Actually, they have two stores. We ended up spending over $200 on the trip. With gas at $6.70 a gallon, we spent over $60 on gas and a quart of oil. The oil alone was $20. Then we bought some groceries. We didn’t need to buy much because we ordered most of our groceries at the beginning of the school year. Without listing everything on the $157 order, I’ll give the highlights: 10lbs flour-$15.39, 2 Hillshire Farm sausage ropes- $16.30, and two 2lb bricks of Tillamook cheese- $33.90. (I love cheese.) We also bought six cans of Nalley’s chili at $3.59 a can.

Out the back door of the school, looking at the airstrip.

Back at school, I felt pleased enough to tell some of the staff, who are locals, that we made the trip. I was told of trips where people have gotten lost because they were unfamiliar with the trails. Even locals have become lost in a storm and have had to hunker down in sub-zero temps to wait out the storm. My hunkering skills are not what they used to be. Everyone had warned us not to go alone on our first trip. But the weather was very cooperative so we felt confident we could make the trip. But not everybody congratulated me on making the trip alone.

“Are you stupid!” This was not a question; it was a statement by one of the classroom aides. Hearing that phrase brought back countless memories of countless people shouting that at me. I believe that if I ever write a book about my life, that might be the title. Or, “Hey, Don’t Poop There! And Other Pearls of Wisdom I Learned from People Shouting at Me.” I don’t know why, but people seem to want to communicate to me by shouting. And using profanity. Anyways, back to my story. When Gloria shouted that at me, it made me wonder if we made the right decision to ride by ourselves. But, seeing how we made it back safe and sound, I feel confident we can make it again. But I do know how easy it is to get lost out on the Tundra. There are no landmarks to use as points of reference. No hills, trees, or road signs. Going in the wrong direction can make for a cold night of hunkering. Or worse.

Maybe next weekend we’ll try it again. The weather forecast doesn’t look too promising, but we’ll see. It’s like they say, “If you don’t like the weather, wait 15 minute. Over there. Wait over there. And stop talking!!!!” I don’t know why they say that, but they do.

1-14-2012

2012-01-14T11:03:00.000-08:00

Another quarter of school finished and another set of report cards to complete. The kids are happy to be back at school even though they may complain when I hand them an assignment. Me: “Here, I’d like for you to complete this moderately complex set of tasks that you have been adequately prepared to accomplish by me. Just follow the simple instructions and work quietly until you are finished. Thank you for being compliant and courteous to other students.” Students:“ WE WANT TO WATCH SHREK!!!!” We seem to have different views some days on what we should be doing in the classroom. But the students and I agree that the funniest part of Shrek is when he farts in his mud bath. Classic Hollywood.

The kids are happy for the most part to be back at school. Since it has been so cold, they had been cooped up inside for the Christmas break. Now they are able to have more room to play. And yell. Apparently they didn’t get their daily yelling needs met during break and are now making up for it. They also are catching up on their need to run from point A to point B. Even if it is only from their desk to the pencil sharpener. Maybe they just want to hurry and get back to completing their assignment. I doubt that part, but it is nice to hear and see them happy.

Hoar frost that formed on the net, rim, and backboard.

The other day, Monica looked out our window and pointed at the power line, which runs between our house and our neighbor’s, and said “Hoar frost.” Since I had not heard of that term before, I was somewhat curious about what the power line had done to anger my wife. I thought she was over reacting and considered it a bit inappropriate. I remembered back to a similar comment I had made to an erratic driver and I was chastised for using such language. It turns out hoar frost (notice the spelling) is a phenomenon that occurs when objects become cooler than the surrounding air. Ice crystals form on the objects in abundance and make it look kind of cool. It now makes sense when Monica points at an object and makes that declaration. But, as it turns out, she doesn’t like when I say it. Or how I say it.

With school back in full swing, it means that we are in the backside countdown to summer. And with that, it means that a 10-minute walk outside will not require 10 minutes just to get dressed. We have not seen the temperature above -10 in almost a month. We are looking forward to spending some time outside worrying about sunburn, not frostbite. It is suppose to get above zero soon, so we’ll spend time out on the snowmobile. We planned on heading upriver to Emmonak to get groceries but I want to wait until it warms up more. My fingers are still feeling the effects from my last trip.

My focus now is to get the kids back into the swing of school. We are gearing up for our annual science fair at our school, with the winners traveling to another school for the district science fair. Some are excited while others couldn’t care less. One of the problems of doing these experiments is that it is difficult to get even the simplest of materials needed. Like eggs or candles or food coloring. I’ll need to prepare now for next year’s science fair so we can do more and exciting experiments. Maybe we can use the ‘air bubbles in the water’ experiment from Shrek as an experiment. I know I would have several volunteers for that one.

1-7-2012

2012-01-07T10:50:00.000-08:00

Those who know me think I can be kind of whiney. I’ve complained about it to them several times but it doesn’t seem to change their biased opinion. I think the problem is that they are just unconcerned about my circumstances. The harder I try to explain how miserable my situation is, the more they seem to become disinterested. And sometimes irritated. And a few have become violent.

All of that leads to this: it’s cold. It is not the “I think I’ll need a jacket this morning” kind of cold. More like “I think my liver is frostbitten, and not in a good way” kind of cold. For the past three weeks we’ve been living in the underside of zero. We have not been warmer than -20 for the past two weeks. The coldest so far this year for us has been -40. Luckily for us, most of this time has been during our winter break, so we have not been required to be outside. But I did have to venture out to get our snowmobile.

Monica on her first drive.

We ordered our snowmobile last fall, but it had to be ordered from the factory so its journey took awhile. In fact, it arrived just after Christmas. They flew it in on a freight plane to Emmonak, which is about 20 miles away. The only way for me to get to Emmonak was to walk (nope), fly (too expensive), or hitch a ride with someone else on another snowmobile. I chose the latter because I am lazy and cheap.

I rode on the back of Joe Strongheart’s snowmobile to Emmo. The trail is mostly on top of the Yukon River, even but winding. The temperature was -20, making the ride brutal. I am lucky I invested in quality cold weather gear. The only part of me that got really cold was my face. I had a fleece balaclava that covered my face, but it didn’t really keep the wind out. I had to keep my head down most of the way to keep from getting frostbite. This was not going to work on the way back when I had to drive, so I bought a neoprene facemask for the trip back home. I didn’t have any frostbite on my face after I got home so I know it worked.

My fingers and hands did get cold. I was following Joe on the way back and was scared of losing him if I didn’t keep up. Being out on the tundra, there are no landmarks to use for references. Just follow the trail. Or in my case, follow Joe’s taillight. I didn’t want to fall behind for another reason. Joe is Yu’pik and has lived here his entire life. I did not want to look like a wuss by stopping because my fingers were cold, so I pushed on. Well, we made it back and my fingers were not injured permanently. The next day, I was complaining (I get it) to Joe’s wife about my sore fingers from the cold the day before. She looked at my snow mobile and showed me where the switch for the hand-grip warmer was located. So, we both learned something that day: I learned how to keep my hands warm while riding and she learned I was an idiot. I think she was leaning toward that direction to begin with.

Some people I know will think I’m complaining about the cold. I think I am just stating the facts as they are, in an unemotional manner. Sort of like a snowmobile operator’s manual. It’s -38 and I don’t want to walk to the post office. We have to walk because it is too cold for the snow mobile to start today. Now that is whining. But I don’t care because it’s cold.

Merry Christmas

2011-12-24T12:41:00.000-08:00

Our Christmas tree.

Well, we’ve made it through our first week of Christmas break and Monica hasn’t smothered me with my pillow yet. I believe this is because of her strong convictions that most murders are wrong. It still makes me nervous each time she rolls over during the night.

I’ve stated here before that we don’t have a store in our village. This means that our ability to purchase fresh produce is limited. There is an online outlet that will deliver produce out here called Full Circle. It is expensive since it is delivered by airfreight, but worth it since this is the only way to get it here. We get a box arriving weekly containing assorted vegetables and fruits. The options are limited to what is available to them, but we’ve been getting hard fruit and a variety of vegetables each week. I was a little worried about the amount of roughage we would suddenly be getting, but so far so good.

We have finished our first week of break, or as Monica calls it, “Cooped up with Clay”. The temps have dropped below zero with the forecast calling for us not to see positive temperatures for a week or so. With it that cold, we are not persuaded to go outside for any length of time, so Monica is cooped up with me. I see this as the perfect time to spend with me, hearing about ideas I’ve come up with. What she deems as bizarre, I see as brilliant. One of my ideas is a TV show about an Amish astronaut. Because of his religious convictions, he’s unable to use any of the buttons, levers, or dials that are used in his astronaut duties. But he has the most brilliant astronaut mind ever. So NASA sends up a monkey with him to be his hands while in the spaceship. Well, we can all imagine what hilarity would ensue. But Monica pooh-poohed the idea by consulting Professor Google and reading to me the tragic history of monkeys in space. I reminded her that millions of people find Two and a Half Men to be entertaining so this should be a shoe in. I’ll work out the title of the show later. And not to worry, there will be a poop-throwing episode.

This is about as high as the sun gets this time of the year.

Monica is working hard on her college courses. She is working towards her teaching degree through Western Governors University, an online college. She had a few troubles with taking tests because of our isolation and lack of reliable Internet service. But that was fixed when our counselor was able to proctor her tests. This got me to wondering if online colleges have online sports teams. Do they have a team of students who are on scholarships that sit in basements and play Madden Football with other online colleges? And if so, I wonder if I have any eligibility left.

Well, we’re down to -19 at sunrise this morning at 11:28. The days will be getting longer now, so I can’t wait until sunrise is before lunch. We are still lucky in that we still have running water and sewer. Most houses around us have no water or sewer right now, so we’re just hoping not to be one of those. The city workers are trying to resolve the problem. But I’m not eating any of the fresh fruits or vegetables just in case. Merry Christmas.

12-18-2011

2011-12-18T10:19:00.000-08:00

Our winter break started on Friday and I am ready for this. I strongly believe that having nothing to do is very underrated. People like to talk big about how much work they do. But you never hear people boast about how they loaf around all day and have nothing to do. Until now. I truly have no activities that require a large amount of effort during the Christmas break. Eating may be the most physically demanding activity I do today. Maybe I’ll put it in a small plate so I have to get up twice for a refill. Or maybe I’ll just bring the skillet to my chair and eat it there. By eating straight from the pan, I will increase my physical activity by have to dodge dirty looks from my wife. So I’m not sure if the trade-off is worth the extra effort.

Fishing on the Yukon.

Monica is learning things about me she probably didn’t want to know. Monica and I have spent more time together up here than we have in any other time in our marriage. Monica worked the night shift as a 911 dispatcher before heading up here, so our schedules were not in sync. She’s beginning to observe first hand my slothful ways. One of the things she hates is how I have everything I need at arms length (except the toilet) when I’m at my chair. Luckily I don’t need very much, but I know I can get to it in short notice and without the extra effort of leaving my chair. I know there are many other things that she finds exasperating about me, but I fear if I share them, everyone will know how big of a toad I really am.

Something that I have discovered about Monica is that she can cook. And cook very well. Who knew? I didn’t. And I am a bit miffed that she never shared that information with me before. We’ve been married almost 9 years and I’m just finding this out. So, for all of this time, I’ve been doing the majority of the cooking (and eating) out of fear and love. Now, I find out she can cook. She’s been keeping this from me so she didn’t have to do her share of the cooking. Not telling me this is akin to me having the ability to fly and keeping it a secret from her because I knew she’d pester me to run more errands. I think that would be an abuse of my power, flying to Starbucks for a cup of joe. But, it sure would come in handy for a beer run. Or to show off at class reunions.

We had our school Christmas program last week. After hearing ‘It’s Beginning to Look a lot Like Christmas’ constantly for the past two weeks, I’d love to punch Michael Bublé in the face. So we sang that and we read ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas’. The kids did a great job in spite of fact that their teacher does not have the proper skills or knowledge on how to choreograph our part of the program. Guess I’ll start watching Glee.

I have over two weeks to rest up for the second half of the school year. Next week we can begin to count the hours of daylight as they increase. Most of the teachers have headed south for the break, so it will be very quiet here. Our school counselor is staying so we’ll have Christmas dinner with her. Our snowmobile is scheduled to get here next week, so maybe we’ll have that to help entertain us. Monica will be busy with her college work, so I’ll be able to play Tiger Woods on the Xbox. The sad part is that I won’t be able to spend my break watching Oprah.

12-11-2011

2011-12-11T09:47:00.000-08:00

The early winter has produced some pretty strong storms up here. Usually, the strong storms appear in February-March. We’ve had a couple already, including this weekend. Our house is built on four-foot stilts so when the wind blows, our house rocks back and forth. And not in a baby-in-a-cradle kind of way, more like a house rolling down a hill with lots of big rocks on it. The house shakes violently when the big gusts hit, and shudders unevenly with the regular wind.

10ft snowdrift outside our front door.

Our village, Nunam Iqua, sits about one mile inland from the Bering Sea. This allows us to enjoy the severe breezes the Arctic has to offer. Earlier this week we had difficulties on the walk to work during a storm. This storm brought about 5 inches of snow and 40 mph winds. The problem with the combination of wind and snow is that the snow does not spread evenly. It piles in unfortunate places. For example, right in the path I want to walk. Some of the snowdrifts were taller than I am. The drifts we couldn’t conquer, we walked around. Most times in ass-deep snow. The land is flat, so we don’t have to worry about hills and the lake we walk on doesn’t collect drifts. The lake we walk on is also frozen.

After a storm, the path becomes much easier to walk on because people drive their snowmobiles on the path and pack the snow down. The majority of the time, the walk to school is a pretty easy walk. All of us have very good cold weather gear to wear, so the temperature really doesn’t affect us; it’s the wind that causes most problems. But walking to school in a storm is pretty exhilarating. And exhausting.

Now, I know that sounds like a lot of whining. But it’s not whining. The fact is I love the storms. I love standing at the window, watching snow hurry past at 40 mph. I also love the fact that I’m holding a hot cup of coffee, wearing warm slippers, and have a furnace that works harder than a one-legged man at a Riverdance audition. I love that only inches away, the storm is raging. Yet where I stand I’m comfortable and untouched by Mother Nature. When I was in the Navy, I felt the same way about being on the submarine: at 800 ft under the surface of the ocean, I was dry and breathing mostly clean air. Well, filtered. Actually it was nasty, but the fact that I was breathing was a huge comfort to me. It’s also like standing two feet from the pit-bull who’s at the end of his chain, exhorting all of his energy to break free and eat my liver. I’m not really sure why I enjoy endangering my life by trusting that things don’t break. I do realize the fragility of what is involved because there is no way I could ever bungee jump.

I’ll continue to watch the storm from the comfort of my living room. I may have to transport a teacher to the airstrip tomorrow, but the worst the storm has to offer should have passed. I will also rethink the logic of taunting a dog on a tether. Which shouldn’t take very long since there is no logic in that activity.

12-3-2011

2011-12-03T10:10:00.000-08:00

The time between Thanksgiving and Christmas is a weird time. Everybody knows how many days until winter break begins. Kids are announcing the countdown when they enter the classroom in the mornings. I try to remind them about the big picture; it’s the summer break they need to get excited about. But it’s difficult for them to think about the summer when it is so far away. It also doesn’t help when other teachers are so giddy about flying south for a couple of weeks. I’m even thinking about telling the kids that there is no Santa. I know it might break a few little hearts, but at least they won’t be so excited about the break and they could concentrate on their schoolwork. It may seem a bit cruel, but in the long run it will be better for them.

Sunrise out our front window- 11:15am

Getting groceries up here has been a challenge this winter. We ordered the bulk of our food last summer. These orders should last us for the entire school year. We ordered a couple of hundred pounds of meat, cases of canned food, sugar, flour, etc… and most of that will last us. The perishables are a different story. We did an order in Oct for some items and it took over a month to arrive. We also didn’t get everything we ordered and some items came frozen (eggs). We order from a grocery store, Fred Meyers. They take the order, send someone through the store with the list and a shopping cart, fill the order, and ship it. Seems simple enough, but something broke down in their system.

We received two shipments; one through the mail and one through a shipping company. Their statement was that the perishables had to be shipped through the airfreight service. This is expensive, but it does get here much faster and is kept in a controlled climate. The problem with that was that the controlled climate was the freezer, as requested from Fred Meyer. Nothing we ordered required freezing. This included two dozen eggs. Most of the order was shipped through the post office, cutting the cost of the shipping dramatically.

Our indoor porch this morning.

Most importantly, we got our toilet paper. We were really counting on using that. Unlike butter, I am unwilling to ration the use of toilet paper. I don’t really want to consider how a person would ration toilet paper. When rationing butter, you could just have butter every other day instead of every day. Ok, butter is delicious and pretty important. Let’s use broccoli as our example when it comes to rationing food. But for rationing toilet paper, I don’t imagine it could work like that. Also, I refuse to ration coffee. I would rather go without than have only one cup a day.

I may hold off on telling the kids about Christmas lies. If I remember correctly, the Grinch was unfairly portrayed as someone malevolent and evil. I’ve discussed this with Monica and she was pretty quiet on the subject. Come to think of it, I don’t think she was even in the room when we discussed it. Most of our conversations take place with me in the living room, talking and her not. I find her more agreeing this way and she finds me less irritating. Win-win.

11-27-2011

2011-11-27T12:53:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving has come and gone and that once again reminds me how much I loathe shopping. We have chosen to live in a place so far removed from shopping that we don’t even have a store in our village. We are 500 miles away from the nearest Wal-Mart or Costco. Being this far away one could rest assured that the crazy ‘black Friday’ thing could go unnoticed here. But no, we had to watch it on the news, over and over. This has become an event, with people choreographing their moves from store to store. Some people wait in line for days in order to get in the door first. This is the equivalent of me camping out in front of my dentist’s office so I can be the first root canal of the day. People do this willfully, without getting paid.

If it seems like I’m cantankerous about this, there is a perfectly good reason: I am. I don’t understand it. I must be in the minority, because after watching two days worth of news coverage, I see that most of the country is willing to stand in line in order to spend their hard earned money. Additionally, holiday cheer is abundant. Nothing says Merry Christmas like shoving an old woman to the ground in order to get the last 22” flat screen TV.

Thanksgiving with the gang.

Ok, I’ll quit being so negative. We did have a very nice Thanksgiving Day. We spent the morning on the computer, talking with family on Skype. Skype allows us to see and hear what others are doing without us. What we’ve found is that they’re all having lots of fun and food without us. After we spent some time on Skype with our families, we went back home to have our dinner. We had all the fixens, cranberries included. We also had very good company. Essie, Brittnay, and Grover came over for the afternoon. They are all teachers here too, so they did know us and willingly came over. We all contributed to the menu and had way more than we needed. I ate until I couldn’t eat any more, then I had pie. I did wait for a few hours until I ate my second piece of pie. Out of consideration to our guests, I had to try both the apple and pumpkin pies. Also out of consideration to our guests, I kept my pants on after the meal even though both me and my pants agreed it would have been much more comfortable to shed them.

Sunset

We did have a very nice and relaxing break from work. Monica has been working much more than we had anticipated. She also will be teaching the preschool after the first of the year. It has just been funded through a grant and we have been without a preschool for a few years here. She will be setting it up also so that will keep her busy. That and going to college full time. She barely has time to wait on me hand and foot. We have three more weeks of school until winter break begins. We are staying here for Christmas, as it is so expensive to fly south for the two and a half weeks. Hopefully we’ll have our snowmobile so we’ll have plenty to do. Now, I have to get ready for ‘cyber Monday’. I really hope it’s about shopping.

11-20-2011

2011-11-20T12:20:00.000-08:00

Well, the announcement came and once again I’ve been snubbed by People magazine. The sexiest man alive was given to one of the ‘Hollywood elite’, ignoring the popularity of overweight, unkempt gentlemen. Bradley Cooper may have some primal appeal to the American women, but the ‘Scraggly Beard’ look has become vogue for the fashion enlightened. People was on the right track but they picked the wrong guy from The Hangover.

The banks of the Yukon River.

Last week we had a pretty big storm, even for up here. What made it so bad was the high winds caused a big surge in the tide. There was no coastal freezing of the Bering Sea yet, so the tide was pushed up into the villages situated on the coast. Winter storms normally occur later in the winter and the sea ice protects coastal villages from flooding. We are about a mile from the sea, so we were spared major flooding. We had water up to our house, but we’re on 4ft stilts, so no flooding damages to homes in Nunam Iqua. But this does cause other problems. We are on the banks of the Yukon River, and when you have flooding in 20-degree temperatures, it leaves an ice sheet behind. Also, the Yukon already had a two-foot layer of ice on it. The sea surge buckled and broke the river ice, pushing some of that close to houses. A few years ago the floating chunks of ice, some as large as cars, knocked a few houses off their pylons. People were nervous about that last week. But we couldn’t just pack our valuables in the pickup and drive to higher ground. (no roads) (or pickups) The Yukon Delta sits at sea level and the nearest hill is 15 miles away.

The weather had all of the airplanes grounded in Western Alaska, so we had no choice but to sit it out. As it turned out it was not as bad as feared. But what got me thinking was, what if something happened and someone needed medical attention? I’m at the age where sharp pains occur suddenly and for no apparent reason. Maybe they did when I was younger and I just ignored them. But now, I fear them. Any pain that happens in my chest area convinces me I may be having a heart attack. I don’t know what a heart attack feels like, but I’ve been certain a hundred times that I was having one. Or a headache reminds me of tumors. But so far, no medical emergencies. Even on a clear day, it would take at least an hour for a plane to get here and then another hour to get to a hospital. So if I do have a heart attack, I hope it’s one of those slow moving ones.

Morning coffee without heat.

So we’ve survived the storm without incident. Well, we did lose power for two separate nights. We realized how unprepared we are for that, since we had only two candles. My mom did send up a flashlight that has a crank to recharge the battery, so that gave me light to read. The real bad part was that we don’t have heat without electricity. We don’t have a wood-burning stove, but it wouldn’t matter if we did since there are no trees here on the Tundra. The school has a generator, so if it got too bad we could always head up there.

I guess I’ll have to wait until next year to see if People Magazine has changed its biased and uneducated views on the definition of the word ‘sexiest’. Or ‘man’. Or ‘alive’. I should qualify for at least one of their antiquated stipulations on their competition. It would sure enhance my career.

10-30-2011

2011-10-30T11:53:00.000-07:00

This past week was a busy one for us. It began like all Monday mornings for me. The alarm starts squealing at 5am. I shut the alarm clock up and fumble for my glasses. I check the bed to make sure it is still dry. I should say I check my side; Monica can check her own. I sit up and take off my Breathe Right strips. I’m not sure if they help with my snoring but I have stopped waking up in a panic with a pillow pressed to my face. I then shuffle off to the bathroom to shower and get ready for the day.

We had a teacher in-service on Monday, so we had no students. A quiet day and we were able to get a lot done. We also had our parent/teacher conferences last week. The turnout was larger than I had anticipated. I enjoy talking to parents about their kids and showing them what we are doing in class. There seems to be a disconnect between some parents and their kid’s school career. Formal education isn’t very high on some people’s priority list, mainly because knowing how to solve an algebraic problem doesn’t have much to do with hunting moose and catching salmon. We are only two generations removed from everyone living a total subsistence lifestyle here. This culture did not have a monetary economy; it was based on being able to gather resources to survive. If you had more than you needed, you shared it with those who didn’t. Their language was a verbal communication, not written. Education was not done in classrooms formally but taught out in the tundra, learning by doing. So I completely understand why some parents don’t feel that writing book reports are very important in their child’s life. My job is to stand in front of their children and convince them that it is important.

Friday night was our Halloween Carnival at school. We had face painting, ring toss, a fishing booth, and Monica and I set up our X-Box with the Kinect. We had it hooked up to a Smart Board, which is equivalent to a 60-inch screen. Two hours of carnival time equals about ten hours of regular time. We had a full house at the gym and a great staff who worked their butts off to make the carnival happen.

I also have a birthday tomorrow. According to my driver’s license and every mirror I happen to look at, I’m reminded that I’ve made it half way to 90. I can’t imagine what 90 will feel like. Friday night I sprained my ankle sitting in a chair. Not while actively taking a seat, but while I was already sitting down. No weight on my feet. I pivoted my foot and felt a sharp pain. You’d think with all of the practice I’ve had, sitting on my ass doing nothing, that I could sit safely. Guess not.

Now, we have to get ready for trick-or-treaters. I wonder where we are as a society when we encourage children to dress as monsters and demand candy from strangers. And if the candy is not awarded to the little extortionists, they threaten to do harm to our dwelling. And while they’re doing this, their parents stand behind them, quietly encouraging them. Luckily, eggs are a very expensive commodity up here so we don’t have to worry about getting egged. Unfortunately, rocks are free.

10-22-2011

2011-10-23T08:36:00.000-07:00

Fall is my favorite season. The cooler air feels better in the lungs. The leaves turn to colors that make even a drab countryside look spectacular. We celebrate two holidays that require us to eat until we are ashamed of ourselves. We sneak up on unsuspecting animals, shoot them, have our pictures taken with them, and put that picture on Facebook, smiling with pride about how we outsmarted an animal that is still confused by headlights. Football starts Friday night and ends on Sunday night. Fall is a grand three months.

Here in Nunam, fall lasts for about 7 minutes. The grass turns from green to brown overnight. Since we don’t have any trees here on the Tundra, there are no leaves to turn color and drop. Just one day it snows and winter is here, no fanfare. It’s like when you are out with a bunch of friends and the weird guy just kind of appears. Or how most people describe it: “Crap, Clay found us.”

We finished our first quarter last week. I’m looking at this school year like a football game. It’s time to take stock in what we’ve done so far and make adjustments accordingly. I am seriously thinking about wearing a helmet and a cup next quarter. Report cards are done and parent/teacher conferences are next week. The time has gone by quickly and it has been a good quarter.

Next Friday night is our Halloween carnival at the school. Last year I ran the bowling booth, with me being the pin-monkey. (Insert your own cruel joke here.) This year Monica and I will set up our Xbox with the Kinect to the Smartboard. This will give the kids something new and will keep me from injury. Last year with so much bending and squatting picking up those bowling pins, I was gimping around for days after that. It’s like I aged a year overnight.

We had a Saturday Fun Day with my class this Saturday. With the help of Monica and two other teachers here, Brittnay and Essie, we showed a movie, made spider hats, and served lunch. It was a good time for the kids by all accounts. At least nobody cried. This was the second Fun Day we had this year and I’m trying to do one a month. This gives the kids a few hours of activities on a Saturday. There is no other place in town for the kids to go to. They literally have no place to go other than their house or play outside. As I’ve said on here before, we don’t even have a store in the village. Now that it is below freezing in both the day and night, being inside where it’s warm is nice for the kids.

Monica and my spider hats.

Now that we won’t see many days with the temperature above freezing, it might be time to drag out the cold weather parka. I’m waiting for someone else to use theirs first so I won’t look like a wimp. Nothing will put your manhood into question quicker than overdressing for the weather. Or wearing white after Labor Day. At least I can put my shorts away now and wear my Levis.

10-8-2011

2011-10-08T11:04:00.000-07:00

October is here and cooler weather came with it. We’ve had some hard frosts and we had snowflakes yesterday. Nothing stuck, but it was still snow. It isn’t light outside till 9am, so we get to see some nice sunrises during school; those never get tiresome to watch.

I spent part of last week in Hooper Bay, which is a larger school in our district. Half of the district’s teachers met there for our in-service. We flew out of here on Wed. and came home Friday night. We were accommodated the floor of a third grade classroom. I did have an air mattress, so at least I didn’t have to touch the floor with my head or side of my face. Third graders are not discriminate about where they step so I can’t imagine good things being in the carpet. Well, gummi worms are good, but not to sleep on. Dog poop is not good for anything, especially not to sleep on. Now I have to take another shower.

We talked about curriculum and classroom management. Talking about curriculum is usually coma inducing and this time it was no different. When talking about classroom management, it became teachers trying to out-story each other. Everyone’s anecdote was worse than the others. It seems that vampires and werewolves are alive and well up here too.

Anytime teachers clump together, a single phrase seems to always come up: teachable moments. In college, they told us ‘teachable moments’ were times when something unexpected happens and you use that situation to teach something important to the student blah, blah, blah. I have found that when something unexpected happens that is a good time to yell at students. Last week I came upon an unexpected situation and I decided to leave what was said alone.

I was showing the class some pictures I took during a vacation to Washington DC a few years ago. When the Lincoln Memorial picture came up, one of my 4^th graders started to tell the rest of the class about the Memorial. He pointed out that it is huge and that Lincoln’s hands are positioned so one shows strength and one shows compassion. (I did not know that.) The rest of the class was listening attentively as the student talked about Lincoln’s life as a lawyer and then as President. He told the class solemnly that President Lincoln was shot in a theater while watching a play. One of the students asked why he was killed. The student calmly explained that Lincoln wore a tall hat and the guy behind him couldn’t see the play so he shot him.

I know, I should have corrected him and explained how Castro plotted with the CIA to kill Lincoln because of his views on Israel. Wait, that was Garfield. Anyways, I didn’t correct him because I saw the way the kids were listening to him. They will learn soon enough why and how he died, but they will always remember that he was shot in a theater. Another reason I didn’t correct him was because I was laughing so hard. Quietly.

It is always fun to listen to what the kids infer or make up on their own. But I guess they’re learning something, I know I am. Transferring knowledge is important. I for one will never wear a stovepipe hat where it can obscure the view of another patron in the theater. Lesson learned Mr. Booth.

9-25-2011

2011-09-26T06:41:00.000-07:00

The days are getting shorter. Well not the hours in a day, it’s still 24 hours, just the daylight. We are losing about 6 minutes of daylight each day so it adds up fast. It’s not getting light until after 8:30, so when I sleep in on the weekends it feels like I’m getting up real early because it is still dark outside. The problem is that I get real sleepy when it gets dark. Like going to bed sleepy. Which is fine now, but in a month, it will be dark by five, so I’ll be getting plenty of sleep this winter.

I teach three separate grades: 3rd, 4th, and 5th. The great thing about that is that I get about two-thirds of the same kids back the next year. The bad thing about that is that I get about two-thirds of the same kids back the next year. Really, it is a good thing. It’s nice to know the kids and what they are like in the classroom. It also really helps me because they know me and how I rule my classroom. They know how much they can get away with and how much they can’t. They also know what it means when my left eye starts twitching.

This means that the third graders are the newbies in the class. They sit in their cluster and watch me with curiosity and skepticism. They are not sure if they should fear me or laugh at me. The other two grades already know that answer: they laugh nervously. One of my new students reported to me that she needed a drink because her “lungs are dry.” I told Auquawoman to wait until our next break, promising her that she would not die of thirst.

I use a graphic organizer for writing in my class and it is labeled ‘THEMATIC WEB’. Last week I had my class write about their favorite movie and we used the graphic organizer to help organize our writing. (I’m thinking you wish I was using one for my writing.) The organizer has a main topic box and six ‘detail’ boxes that connect to the main topic box. The students were to put the title of their favorite movie in the ‘main topic’ box and then add six details in each of the ‘detail boxes’. One student’s favorite movie was “The Matic Web”. Apparently it was a story about a spider, named Matic, who weaves webs and talks with pigs.

I had my hair cut today. Since there isn’t a barber for a couple hundred miles, we ordered clippers from Amazon.com and Monica cuts my hair. She’s done this for years because I don’t like other people standing that close to me, touching my head. I’m not really fond of her touching my head, but since she said I looked like Friar Tuck, I knew I needed to get it cut. I also decided to trim my beard right after my haircut. You know, the whole package. I hadn’t had my hair cut since May. It is depressing to see that the amount of beard trimmings was more than my hair trimmings. It is bizarre to have hair disappearing from my head and migrating to my shoulders, sprouting in places they hadn’t been before. I even found one growing inside of my ear. How can that be useful to our species?

Not only is it getting darker, it is getting colder. I saw the weather forecast for next week and we may get snow by the end of the week. I don’t have to shovel it or drive in it, so I say bring it on. It’ll be nice to see the snow falling while I’m reading my new book about Matic and her friends.

9-19-2011

2011-09-18T14:42:00.000-07:00

Week four is done and I don’t have much to whine about. Last year it was nice to write my blog and bellyache, since Monica wasn’t hear to suffer my babbling. But she is able to hear it firsthand this year. Since writing is similar to work, and I’m lazy, I tend to whine more with my face-hole than with writing. That’s my pseudo-attempt at making an excuse as to why I didn’t write a blog last week.

I was in Anchorage last week, receiving training for a tutoring program I will be helping with this year. Our school offers an after school program for up to 15 kids three days a week. It is administered by an outside group, which sets up the curriculum and even provides snacks. Another teacher and I will be sharing the duties of managing the program from our end. This will give us a few extra bucks to go towards our next purchase: a snowmobile.

Well, it’s called a snowmachine up here but I’ll stick with using my southern accent. Having a snowmobile would give us something to do while it’s frozen outside, besides just watching TV. Not that TV is all bad, but getting cabin fever may be dangerous this year. I don’t know how Monica will handle being up here all winter, knowing there are sharp objects in the kitchen drawers. Plus, when I’m asleep I snore. Loudly. And I have no way to defend myself while sleeping. So this snowmobile purchase just may save my life. It would also allow us to do some shopping at an actual store. Emmonak is about 20 miles away on the Yukon River and has two stores. Once the river freezes by the first part of Dec., it is used like a road for people riding snowmobiles.

It will be expensive to shop there. Just the gas will be a big part of the cost. It is about $6 a gallon and may go up during the winter. Food is pretty outrageously priced; eggs are about $5 a dozen. Crappy, small red delicious apples are $13.29 for 5lbs. Monica went up there yesterday on a boat with some friends and bought a few things for us. Eggs, not apples.

Monica has been working more than we had anticipated. Way more. In 19 school days, she has worked as a substitute in 14 of them. She has subbed as a special ed teacher, special ed aide, general ed class aide, and a math/science HS/MS teacher. She has not subbed in my class yet, but maybe someday. She will be starting her college career next month, so she’ll really be busy, with subbing and doing her own homework. I’m not sure how the laundry will get done, but maybe the Laundry Fairy will show up. I was the Laundry Fairy one year for Halloween. Ok, it wasn’t Halloween, but it sure makes a Tuesday go much faster.

With nothing to whine about, I have to look for a new hobby. The snowmobile will give me something to do once it gets cold. Until then, I can try out the Xbox. Monica and a couple of other teachers have already started by playing some Kinect games (dancing and jumping around). I have yet to succumb to the urge to dance to Lady GaGa. Maybe the Laundry Fairy will help me with that.

9-3-2011

2011-09-03T09:37:00.000-07:00

I realize I didn’t post a blog last week, but I was busy entertaining my parents. Not entertaining in the way of an old-thyme Vaudeville act, but in the way of sitting on an old, uncomfortable couch, painfully realizing what people did before TV. They talked. They talked about mundane things that aren’t discussed much these days. Once Philo Farnsworth put the television in living rooms across America, we were spared conversing about how one’s day went. Now we can watch The Simpsons instead of listening to someone drone on about the difference they are making in the world.

But, we were without TV for most of the time my parents were here. Apparently the cable that runs from the dish to our TV had an open in it. We learned this by doing a little troubleshooting. Our troubleshooting consisted of me holding a ladder and Monica crawling up on the roof, unhooking the old cable, hooking up the new cable, crawling back down the steep-pitched roof to the ladder that was firmly anchored back on the ground. So it is a bit self-serving when Monica rolls her eyes when I explain how we fixed the problem. Without that ladder secured to the ground with my anchoring skills, she may not have been able to scale the roof so we could fix the TV.

We finished week two of the school year. One of the great parts of teaching multiple grades (3-4-5) is that I already had 2/3 of the students in my class last year. The new 3^rd graders are still trying to comprehend what has happened to their lives. They are still trying to figure me out; wondering if I’m serious when I tell them they cannot have a drink of water. I’ve known camels that drink less water than these kids. (Some of my best friends are camels.) I give specific breaks for the students to use the bathroom and get drinks so they are not constantly asking for breaks throughout the day. One of the 3^rd graders asked is she could get a drink of water because her “lungs were dry”. I’ve heard of severe dehydration before, but she must have really been experiencing an awful amount of pain. I told her no. The good news is that I know what I’ll be teaching in health now.

Monica has kept busy up here. Not including playing a cable repairperson, she has worked 6 of 10 days substituting at the school. It looks like she may be able afford to pay for her plane tickets home. She’ll be starting on her college classes in Oct, so she’s already on her way to a teaching career. After taking two classes last semester, I swore I would take a year off before taking any more classes. I’ll be taking a grad level writing class this semester. Maybe after this year my writing will be improved and I’ll figure out what a transitive verb is. I always thought it was a verb that dressed as a noun.

The year has started smoothly so far but I know grief will show up a few times for me. I have Monica here this year to complain to, which she is looking forward to. Our pantry is filled with most of our year’s food and our freezer is filled with meat. I am convinced I will have another great year here in a place called The Middle of Nowhere, Alaska. I think I’ll have another cup of coffee and watch football for the next 14 hours. (Thank you Monica)

8-21-2011

2011-08-21T18:33:00.000-07:00

08-21-2011

School starts Monday. I had all summer to prepare for the first day. I didn’t. I had all of last week in my classroom to prepare. I didn’t. I even have the weekend, but I’m sure I won’t be ready until Monday morning at 8:50 when the kids walk in the door and wait for me to tell them what to do. They will then do something very dissimilar than what I just asked them to do. They’ve been ready for weeks.

After a weekend to settle back in, the teachers reported back to work last Monday. Everyone was talking about the exciting things they did this summer. People traveled and saw new things and experiences. Everyone really loved my story about how we packed all of our things into boxes. They were on the edge of their seats when I described in detail how I picked up each box and placed it in a U-Haul trailer. You wouldn’t know their amazement by the way they pretended to not care. At all.

The week without students went past quickly and without incident. This year I planned better for the start since I may have gotten smarter. We’ll see about that on the first day, but at least I feel better prepared. I hope that feeling doesn’t go away the second the kids walk into the class.

On Friday morning, my parents showed up for a ten-day visit. I don’t think it will take ten days to tour the whole village, but they should have an intimate knowledge of Nunam Iqua by the time they leave. They’ve already seen the school and have met most of our staff. (Four people)

Our house up here is a two-bedroom/one bathroom, so there is plenty of room for the four of us. But it does change our day-to-day routine a little bit. For one, Monica insists I put pants on when we eat. Even when I explain that I don’t plan on going outside she is pretty adamant about it. So, I put pants on and try to act natural.

Another thing that is different is what we hear. 70yr old men make sounds that can be quite alarming. I’m not sure if I should say anything because nobody acknowledges the noises. Mom pretends they’re normal or at least she ignores them. They frighten me. The noises I mean. Well, my parents do a bit too.

They also say things that I don’t need to hear. One of the last things I need to hear coming from the next bedroom right before I go to sleep is my mother saying, “We can still cuddle.” That is something I cannot un-hear. It does make it a little harder to get to sleep after having that running through your head. We were also treated with “Honey, were are my clean underwear?” This implies two things. One, a 70 yr old man is naked, wandering around the house, looking for his underwear. Two, there is a pair of a 70 yr old man’s dirty underwear lying around somewhere. I hope to God they are not the tiger striped bikini type.

I think I’m as ready as I will be for the kids on Monday. Monica is working as a substitute classroom aide this year and will be at work Monday also. I hope she listens to me when I try to boss her around. I’m sure she will. I just wish she’d hurry up and find those dirty underwear so I don’t step on them in the dark.

8-13-2011 Part Two

2011-08-13T16:28:00.000-07:00

Another passenger from Nunam had landed and wasn’t about to be stranded. She called her uncle, who agreed to get her in his boat and take her to Nunam. Grover was standing at the airlines when Monica called to check in. They handed the phone to Grover and he said if we could get to the dock, we could get a ride home. Perfect. We gather our belongings and get a ride down to the dock, where we climbed into a 20-foot aluminum fishing boat.

The hour-long boat ride home was an experience. It was cold, rough, and foggy. We couldn’t see both shores at the same time through the fog. We did get a “Yukon face wash” during the trip, with the waves coming over the bow of the boat often. The flat-bottomed boat gave us a punishing trip in the rough waters. The other person on the boat had just had surgery, shaming me not to bitch about have the crap beat out of me. But we did make it, wet and cold, but finally home.

We were both a little anxious about opening the door to our house because we had been informed during the summer that the house had been broken into. We didn’t know the extent of any damage or mess that would be waiting for us. Fortunately, the ones who broke in were just looking for a place to hang out. The mess was small and not much was missing. We did lose our DVD player, but the TV was still there. Someone did leave a small deposit that was still there. We have called this the Defiant Turd.

The Turd was still floating in the toilet. Monica was the one who discovered it and saved me from having to witness this horrific site. Since she was the one who found it, she would be the one who would dispose of the Turd. She claims it was scowling at her, and had mold on it. When she tried to flush it down, it stayed above the water line and refused to be dragged down the drain. Monica’s determination conquered the Turd. It finally succumbed to the drain. I was afraid to ask what her methods were and I pray she takes that to her grave.

If you made it to this point, thank you. I know it was long but it’s the first of the new season. We are happily settling in and I’ll start work on Monday, sans students for the first week. Then my parents will arrive on Friday. That will give me plenty of material for the blog.

8-13-2011 Part One

2011-08-13T16:23:00.000-07:00

Well, we made it back to Nunam Iqua last night. We left Tulsa on Wed and spent two nights in Anchorage. That was our last time to get Starbucks, beer, and most foods available to people living near a store. Anchorage was also a time to do a grocery order from Fred Meyers and a meat order from the butcher. Both will take at least a week to get here, so we also packed a suitcase with meat and cheeses and checked it with our other luggage.

This posting will be longer than usual and in two parts, but I didn’t want to leave anything out. Plus, you’ll have to read all of this to get the story of the Defiant Turd. True story.

The trip started out just fine. We left Oklahoma, where it was finally raining and under 100 degrees for the first time in three weeks. We checked our bags and headed straight to Starbucks. (Monica’s idea) It was only 8:20 so I passed on by the lounge. Sure I thought about it but I kept going, showing surprising restraint, considering it would be 9 months until I get to display my lack of self-control.

We switched planes at DFW and SeaTac before heading to Anchorage. These flights were all uneventful except for the usual crying kids and cramped spaces for sitting. I’ve also noticed that since airlines started charging for checked luggage, the carry-on luggage is huge, which takes longer boarding and deboarding the plane. Some people (those in front of me) forget that there is 100 other people waiting to get to their seats and spend an unwarranted amount of time stuffing their kitchen sink in the space above my seat. I wanted that space for the kid.

We spent two good days in Anchorage, finishing up with shopping and last minute gorging. We also enjoyed trading the hot Oklahoma temps for the much cooler Alaskan climate. We left for Bethel, where we would change planes yet again. It was raining but Grant Airlines boarded us for Emmonak, which would take us to our last leg of the trip. This was where things went off track.

The weather was somewhat worse for flying once we landed in Emmonak. We were grounded there and had to wait for our 20-mile flight to Nunam Iqua. At about 1pm, the pilot came to us and suggested we start making alternative plans. If I was on the moon and NASA suggested I start making alternative plans, I would have the same look of fear on my face as I did when the pilot spoke with us. The pilot had the same demeanor as a Dr. explaining some horrible disease they’ve found in your brain. Our problem was that our alternative plan was the same as our original plan: getting on the plane and flying to Nunam.

I remembered I did kind of know one of the teachers in Emmonak. Emmonak is in our school district so I used my one chance of an alternative plan by calling the school. They sent the teacher out to get us. She invited us to her house but we decided to stay at the school since she was in the middle of moving from one house to another. Three hours later, we decided to call the airlines to check in with them, hoping the weather had lifted enough to allow us to fly. Nope. But, a teacher from my school had just landed and was in the same predicament. Grover was about to save the day.

05-31-2011

2011-05-31T22:54:00.000-07:00

I have finished my first year teaching in the Alaska bush and will be returning to Nunam Iqua for a second year in August. I’ve been back in Washington for almost two weeks and have eaten enough for the entire summer already. I doubt that I will slow down my eating, since I like to stay ahead in that department. People like me can stay in cold water longer without succumbing to hypothermia. We’re also more buoyant. But on the down side, we may look more delicious to sharks and other people-eating animals in the ocean and swimming pools.

The last few days of school went by without any incidents. The kids were ready for the break. As I’ve mentioned before, it is staying light outside past midnight, so the kids are already into their summer mode of staying out past midnight. The last two days of school consisted of watching a few movies and having a day of games in the gym. The high school had probably a thousand balloons left over from the prom, so we had games that incorporated balloons. The last game had the kids popping all of the balloons as fast as they could. I know that sounds fun, but listening to all of that popping for about 3 minutes can be a bit annoying.

I’m already adjusting to being back to the lower 48. It hasn’t been as warm as I would want, but I’m surviving. The first weekend back, Monica and I headed up to the North Cascades to our cabin on the Twisp River. As seen on TV, the rapture was supposed to commence on that Saturday evening. Monica thought it might be funny to slip away and hide at the predicted time, pretending to be ‘taken’. I failed to notice she was absent since I was not paying attention to her in the least bit. I was busy with beer, a fire, and a podcast from the Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe and did not have the ability to keep track of one more thing. One might think that I would be more curious about people suddenly disappearing, leaving us heathens behind. But no, I was concentrating on my tasks at hand, totally ignoring my wife’s disappearance. When she ‘returned’, she asked if I wondered what had happened to her. I had no idea what she was talking about so I just smiled and said, “I knew you’d be back”. Not the best answer, considering my moral compass isn’t always aligned correctly. True to herself, Monica forgave me once again for something I had no idea that I had just done.

Our summer is pretty much planned out already. We have a couple of Mariner’s games on our agenda and a household move to Oklahoma. We plan on moving all of the stuff we cannot give away in mid-July. Monica’s family lives down there so we’ll be doing a lot of visiting before we head out. We’ll fly out of Tulsa in Aug for another year in Alaska.

I am going to continue with this blog through next year, but I won’t be writing every week during the summer. Once we’re back in Nunam Iqua, there will be plenty of new situations that will occur and I can write about. I’m sure Monica will point out things I miss. Now, if I can just find her. I thought she was in the bathroom…

05-14-2011

2011-05-14T17:54:00.000-07:00

No more pencils, no more books, no more teacher’s dirty looks. That song can get quite annoying; or so I learned on Friday by the other teachers in the building, who not so politely told me to quit singing that song. Apparently they didn’t agree with my style of teaching rhymes. Also, limericks are not appreciated in the elementary level either. But I dare anyone to find a better way to get kids to value literary art than to include swear words.

For all intents and purposes school finished on Friday, although we still have classes until lunchtime on Tuesday. The kids have made it clear that they are done learning for the year and I don’t have the will to bend spoons, so we’ll call it a draw. They’ll be watching a movie and helping me clean the classroom. I’ve also made a DVD for them, using video I took throughout the year. We’ll watch that and I’ll give them each a copy for their troubles.

Students have been falling asleep at school more frequently lately. I know what you’re thinking, but their daytime slumbers are not indicative of my teaching style. Well, not entirely. It is still light outside until past midnight, so the kids stay out much later playing, making them tired during the day. It is also getting warmer outside now. We topped 40 today and it didn’t even freeze last night. This was the first morning in a long time that it hasn’t been below freezing. The Yukon is still frozen and will be until after I head south for the summer. A huge problem that can happen during the breakup is flooding caused by ice-dams. We are seeing that now on the Kuskokwim River to the south of us.

With less than a week left until I head down south, I’m looking forward to a warmer climate. I’ll just have to put things away for the summer and hope nobody decides that I’ll be better off without some of my stuff. It usually isn’t a worry that someone will break in the houses during summer, so I feel our house will be safe. I am going to hide the small TV just in case.

I’m not sure what I’m going to do with the blog after next week. I planned on writing just for the first year, but I may continue with it. This has been cathartic for me to be able to talk about my week without being interrupted. Monica will be up here next year, so unfortunately for her, she’ll be hearing all about my day in person. She tolerates my ramblings pretty well. And when I say she tolerates, I mean she ignores. She has to.

I’ve baked my last loaf of bread for the year, so most of my chores are done. Except for the report cards, but at least I can have toast at midnight when I’m still trying to finish report cards. And I have learned my lesson about using limericks in the report cards. Until I’m able to find something else that rhymes with Nantucket, I’ll be using Spenserian sonnets.

05-07-2011

2011-05-07T12:53:00.000-07:00

I would like to start out today by wishing my mom a Happy Mother’s Day. I would love to talk about the many things she did for me when I was young, but my therapist told me I should be careful with what I shared. I can tell you that she has made me fried chicken for every birthday I’ve been home. She is the one who taught me the importance of hard work and the value of living a clean life. Unfortunately, I never heard a word she said because I was too busy goofing off. Man I miss my 30’s.

Last weekend ended my semester for college. I needed to take two classes for my teacher’s certification, so like a fool I did it this past semester. I have two years to do this, but I thought I should take this on. But I am a much better student this time around. 25 years ago, Eastern Washington University sent me a Dear John letter. They told me it wasn’t working out between us, and we should see other people. I was shocked. I thought I was the best student a university could ask for. I didn’t qualify for any scholarships, so they got full price from me. Since I didn’t go to class, I did not use up the school’s resources. Professors didn’t have to spend time grading my homework, answering any of my annoying questions, or yelling at me for bringing a parrot to class. (You just look foolish in a pirate outfit without a parrot.) I never used any of the school’s other services, mainly because I had no idea they had any. I thought tutoring was a class on the British Monarchy. I also contributed to the local economy by attempting to purchase all the beer in Cheney.

This weekend we are having our prom. I was not invited. Which wasn’t a big disappointment to me. Or to anyone else I suspect. I attended the prom twice when I was in high school. Both times my dates were way out of my league. They had no business going to the prom with a guy like me, and I’m not talking about a restraining order. So I happily went. This has continued in my life, since I over reached in marrying Monica. But, back to the prom. The kids and most of our staff worked hard on decorating the gym for the evening. Last year the prom turned into a basketball game, but the teacher who coordinated it this year said it wouldn’t happen this time. I haven’t heard yet how it turned out.

We will have our graduation next week. We are graduating two students this year. This isn’t an unusual number of grads. Some years there are none, so it’s nice to see a couple this year. Unfortunately, the graduation rate is not where it should be here, so I hope that number goes up. I do have some influence on this and I do take that part of my job serious. It is a goal of mine to help bring that number up. I always tell them if I can do it, anyone can do it. They in turn point and laugh at me.

I have 10 days until school is done and 11 days until I fly back to WA and OK for the summer. Monica is telling me about having the “yard boys” (it’s not a boy band) over to do yard work for her. I’m still sinking to my ass in snow here so I’m glad I’ll be seeing green soon. I hope every mother has a good Mother’s Day. I want to wish Polly a Happy Mother’s Day (biscuits and gravy) and Carolyn a Happy Mother’s Day (tacos). Happy Mother’s Day Mom (fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and corn).

05-01-2011

2011-05-01T10:29:00.000-07:00

Several people asked me on Friday if I watched the wedding. For the sake of this blog, several means two. I’m not sure what I ever did to make a person, much less two, question whether or not I would spend my time watching someone else get married on TV. I wear flannel shirts (usually untucked), old Levis (usually with at least one hole) and a scraggly beard (also with at least one hole). I was 12 the last time I combed my hair and I haven’t cut it since Christmas. It would have made more sense to ask if I had read the Unabomber’s manifesto.

My blank stare and prolonged pause should have given them time to think it through and realize that no, indeed I did not watch the wedding. Instead they must have thought I didn’t hear them, so they repeated the question. I repeated my blank stare routine on them, hoping they would just walk away. I didn’t know what to say; I was at a loss for words. Because when I said, “No”, they waited for an explanation. They wanted to know why I didn’t watch the wedding. Luckily I must have creeped them out by just staring at them, because they did slowly walk away, avoiding eye contact.

School is coming to an end for the year. Or so says my students. I have just over two weeks of school left. We had our 2^nd annual Math/Science Family day at school on Thursday. It went very well. Our class had to do a presentation, so we did one on the transfer of energy. We used a bicycle and a student to explain potential and kinetic energy. The class also lined up like dominos and fell down, hopefully showing the transfer of energy. On Wednesday two of the students thought they would perform a different presentation, using punches to show the transfer of energy. We stayed with the bicycle.

The weather is warming up so the snow is beginning to melt. The snow has drifted into piles well over 7 feet in some places, so that will still be here when I leave. It did snow most of today, but it was 35, so it wasn’t piling up like before. One huge problem is that we’re now starting to fall through. One part of the trail we use to get to school is on a frozen lake we walk across. The lake has about 3 ½ feet of snow covering it. Now that it is getting above freezing during the day, we’re starting to fall through the snow. I’ve gone in to my waist but I’ve yet to lose a boot; others have. Crawling out of the snow must look hilarious, judging from the sounds of people who are looking, pointing and laughing. Soon it will settle enough, but I’ll probably be in WA when that happens.

With 2 ½ weeks left, I’m already thinking about putting some ribs on the smoker and a beer in my hand. I’m ready to wear something besides snow boots. I’m ready to see my wife. I know Monica should have been listed first, but I’ll share the ribs with her. I know she loves me, because she is going to DVR the Ted Kaczynski wedding for me. I love a happy ending.

04-24-2011

2011-04-24T14:19:00.000-07:00

Monica made it out of here safely on Friday afternoon. I took her out to the airport in the stretch limo (a snowmobile pulling a toboggan). This was during school, so when I got back to the classroom, all my students had their faces pressed against the windows. They turned and looked at me with an accusatory glare. “Why didn’t you stay out there until the plane left?” I tried to explain that she was able to get on the plane by herself, and that just standing there wasn’t going to make her flight any safer. It ended with me yelling, “It was cold, ok? Don’t judge me!” They didn’t say anything, but I know they were thinking bad things about me.

Monica was able to spend some time in my classroom while she was up here. She took my place and read to them after lunch. They liked listening to her read more than listening to me, so she’s got that going for her. I think its because she didn’t make them sit still while she read to them like I do. She did well and the kids really enjoyed having her here. We have drawings hanging on our living room wall made just for Monica. She’ll start her college work when she gets out here in Aug. so she can teach too. The school districts out here in the bush really like teaching couples, so it should not be a problem finding someplace to for both of us to teach. This village will be difficult for both of us to teach in because there are only two elementary teachers in our school and that is what she is going to teach too.

We have less than four weeks of school left. The school year is winding down and the kids know it. Even though it feels nothing like spring here yet, they know the end is near and are acting accordingly. They are able to communicate silently, coordinating behavior that is similar to wolf packs. Or a school of sharks.

It is weird being here alone again. When I look over at the couch, I expect to see Monica sitting there, plotting how to rearrange more of the house. But it does look much nicer than before she got here. I’m going to try and not touch too many things, so they’ll stay the way she put them. I am able to live like a bachelor once again, at least for a few weeks. I can eat out of the skillet again without getting dirty looks. I can use the bathroom without shutting the door. My neighbor may not appreciate that, but she should mind her own business and keep her curtains closed.

It is warming up some, getting above freezing for the past two days. Three days in a row above freezing is called the start of spring around here. It looks like it will be warmer for the next week, getting above 30 for most of the days. I’m not looking forward to the snow melting into a muddy mess. The tundra doesn’t drain well, so there will be lots of standing water and mud. Knee high rubber boots are a necessity here unless you like walking in wet shoes. We had Cabela’s send Monica’s boots here so she’ll be ready next fall. That should let the kids know how thoughtful I am, thinking of Monica’s feet that way. I hope that will buy me about 3 more weeks before they find some other character flaw in me.

4-17-2011

2011-04-17T12:56:00.000-07:00

I’ve seen beautiful sunrises and I hear there are nice sunsets, but I’m not awake for those. It’s odd that I’m up to see the sunrise every morning, but I miss the sunset because I’m already asleep. The sun rises at 7:00am and sets at 10:30pm right now, so it’s not that bad. Ben Franklin said “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise”. Well, I’m still poor and dumb, so I’m not taking everything Mr. Franklin says to heart. Remember, he was the one who flew a kite during a thunderstorm. I believe that to be the equivalent of sticking a hairpin in a light socket. Ben also sported one of the first mullets, which Tom Jefferson referred to as “ridiculous”.

I am not experiencing Spring the way I have been accustomed to. I’m used to seeing some green beginning to show. At least bare ground. Here, it has finally moved up to the single digits at night, so I guess that is progress. Yesterday we hit 32 with no clouds in the sky. Monica and I took a short snowmobile ride and crossed the mighty Yukon River. Although we couldn’t tell it was a river. It was just a couple feet of snow over ice. If we could see the river, I think that would have been a bad thing, since I’ve heard that falling through the ice can be a bit dangerous.

Monica has been here for over two weeks now and still plans on coming back up here with me next August. She has spent some time in the classroom reading to students. She has made this place more like a home than a place where I sleep and watch TV. When I was here alone, I ate rice 4-5 times a week. Since Monica arrived, we have not eaten rice once. We’ve had homemade pizza, pasta with sausage, moose meat chili, a roast, paninis, and potato soup. And that was just the first day. This morning, Monica made her biscuits and sausage gravy, which she learned from her mother. To give it a local flair, maybe she could use seal oil instead of bacon grease, and reindeer sausage instead of pork and pour it over pilot bread. Or maybe she could just keep on doing it how she usually does it.

I have one month until I leave for the summer. We are going to stay in Wenatchee until mid July and then move our belongings to Oklahoma. We’ll fly out of Tulsa in mid-August to start school. We needed a place to put our things and a place to stay in the summer, so this will work out just fine. We could stay up here for the summer, but I don’t know what we’d do. Getting a boat would be the only way to travel after the ice breaks up on the river in late May. Having the summer off will give us time to visit family and friends. Plus, being able to order a beer at a restaurant will be nice. So nice I may have more than one.

Monica will leave Friday and I’ll get back to eating rice for most of my meals. Having to hand wash all of my dishes, my decisions on what to make for a meal now are determined by the least amount of dishes I’ll have to wash. If I can make my meal in one dish and eat of the same dish, I’ve just saved myself extra time by having less to wash later. Plus, having a handle on your dinner plate is a good idea. Maybe this is what Ben was referring to as being wise. TJ would agree, shouting, “Hells yeah!” That was how they voted back in the day. When our government would vote on a measure, they would vote “Hells yeah” or “Nope”. "The 'hells yeah' have it. Now, let's go shoot us a turkey. Unless Mullet Head objects." I think President James Buchannan changed how the votes were tallied. Jerk.

04-10-2011

2011-04-10T13:11:00.000-07:00

It’s been just over one week since Monica showed up and I can hardly recognize my own house. It’s amazing what a broom, vacuum cleaner, a mop, a scrub brush, water, pine-sol, sponges, and a small coffee table cover can do for the looks of a house. When one of the teachers came over for dinner last night, she said, “Monica, the house looks great!” How dare she assume that Monica is solely responsible for the new look of the house. Did she consider that after seven months, I decided to change my feng shui so I could feel more at peace?

Monica has made it look more like a home instead of what I was living in. I tend to think of my living style as efficient minimalism. Those boots are in the middle of the dining room because I may need to wear them one of these days. The reason they’re on the table is because I can easily find them in the dark. The reason my dirty socks are on the table is because I’m lazy.

Being an efficient minimalist isn’t for everyone as I’ve observed. I think that doubling the clothes drier as my dresser drawer is genius. My lovely wife thinks of it as being lazy. I’ve heard that the line between lazy and genius is very narrow. She is using the washer much more frequent than I usually do. Her reason was, “When I find clothes on the floor I wash them”. I can’t really find any fault with her reasoning, but that doesn’t mean I have to agree.

But I know that I can’t fight the overwhelming change that is happening. She has two more weeks here until I get the house to myself again. I have to pick and choose what things I want to keep as they are and which ones to allow her to change. I think the going rate is I get to keep one for every ten Monica gets to change. So I have to really think if it’s worth it to fight for the control of the toaster settings or if I should save that fight for something more important, like whose iPod gets to stay connected to the stereo.

Monica has been able to witness some spring storms while she’s here. She walked to school in a blizzard on Thursday because her husband forgot to call and tell her not to come. We did have plans for dinner with the principal, who lives next door to the school, but we decided that I had better head home after school because of the storm. When Monica walked into the classroom at 3:30, I had to tell her we were making the half-mile walk back right then. A one-mile blizzard walk only makes her stronger. That’s what I told her. I will not repeat what she told me because I know some of her family reads this blog and I don’t want them to think that their little flower was capable of such vulgarity.

Well, I hope she takes the winter with her when she heads south. The snow outside my classroom has reached the roof of the school, so I have no outside light now. This also allows easy access to the roof for the kids. I get to yell at kids to quit running in the halls, spit out their gum, and to get off the roof. Now, if Monica can fix the feng shui in my classroom, it may improve my aptitude as a teacher.

04-03-2011

2011-04-03T23:53:00.001-07:00

From my classroom I have a great view of the airport. Usually when I hear a plane land, I casually note its presence and continue with my work. On Friday night, one particular plane was carrying cargo that was of great interest to me. Monica was finally going to arrive. For an airport that had only one flight that night, it was funny how many airplanes I heard before her plane finally landed.

Monica arrived here at 7pm, but without her luggage. She was charged an extra $15 for her luggage in Bethel. But the suitcases stayed in Bethel, along with the other passengers’ luggage because of weight issues with the airplane. This is not uncommon out here, so you just have to wait until the next flight. Or the flight after that. Or…. As of Sunday night, she is still luggageless. We called the airlines yesterday, but they weren’t sure about the status of the luggage. Monica wondered if she would be charged extra for allowing the airlines to store them for her. Then the storm arrived, shutting down all flights in here.

The part of the luggage issue that pisses me off is that Monica loaded one suitcase with cheese and meat. As much as I love my wife, I really love my wife when she brings me meat and cheeses. Knowing that the Suitcase of Delicious is sitting in a hanger instead of here is causing me some distress. Spam and Velveeta work for a while, but when I’m teased with the prospects of brats and cheddar I get a little crazy. Crazy may be too strong of a word; I ordered Monica back to Bethel to get the luggage. Ordered may be too strong of a word; I cried and pleaded with her to find that suitcase. She said, and I quote, “No”.

Monica’s issue with the luggage incident has more to do with her not having any clothes up here than missing out on the meat and cheese. Without her hair dryer, I found her kneeling on the floor in front of the space heater. I took a picture of her but I can’t seem to find the camera now. And it really hurts when I sit down. Oh well, I’m sure I’ll find it soon.

We are having a nice spring storm to welcome Monica. We’ve dropped below zero a few nights last week and now it’s snowing and blowing. I know the trail will be drifted shut in the morning, but it won’t be impossible to make the walk. The wind will be at our backs, so that’ll make it easier. Plus Monica is going to head out with me in the morning, so I’ll have to act like it’s no big deal. With the wind making its noise, she won’t be able to hear me whining all the way.

Monica will be here for the next three weeks, so she’ll have a good idea of what to expect next year. It is kind of weird having her here with me, because I’m used to having conversations with myself. Now someone is on my couch when I talk to myself. She’s used to it and is just glad I’m not talking to her. This blog is just basically me talking to myself and you eavesdropping in on me. But I do feel the need to put pants on when I’m typing this. Hey, I found my camera!

03-26-2011

2011-03-26T13:04:00.000-07:00

It’s Saturday morning again and I’m trying to think of what happened the past week that I can share. Let’s see, I overheard one of my 10-year-old students quoting Al Pacino in Scarface. Another of my students declined the option of taking a bathroom break prior to recess. Once he hit the cold, he quickly changed his mind and began searching for a place to relieve himself. Out in the tundra, there are limited options for finding privacy. After walking a distance away from the playground, he settled on an acceptable distance and did what needed to be done. He had a problem, took action, and solved it. This is what every teacher wants to see from his/her students. Unfortunately, I doubt we will be seeing this question on our upcoming state standardized test. I will submit it to the board for next year.

Stephen Wright said, “Hermits have no peer pressure”. They also have no company. Living up here is similar to a hermit life style in that there are few chances you’ll have visitors. I do enjoy the solitary existence that living up here offers. There are no Wal-Mart trips to anger me. No Costco crowds to deal with. I’ve never had a Jehovah’s Witness knock on my door since I’ve been here. Regrettably, they will now pay me a visit. I’ve heard that they scan blogs on the Internet to find people they may have missed. This differs from the old fashion way of only stalking people door-to-door.

Having time on my hands allows me to watch more TV. Well, when it is working. Last weekend I missed the first weekend of the NCAA tournament, so I was able to do homework. This morning I have a nice signal, so I was able to watch two hours of Man vs. Food. I love that show. It is also educational, because I’ve learned that the terms “meat sweats” and “pirate healthy” are perfectly fine to use in our everyday vernacular. An example of how to use one term correctly would be: “Your Honor, the reason I should be excused from this jury is because I have the meat sweats.” You could also use this as an excuse so you will never be asked to show up to an event you don’t want to go to. Meat sweats will frighten some people.

Another reason I love this show is because of their obsession with bacon. Almost every food challenge involves bacon somehow. And lots of meat. You will never see Adam have to eat a bucket of Brussels sprouts to fulfill his challenge. But you will see him try eating a 6-pound steak with 2 pounds of fries and a quart of cream to wash it down. I know some of the after effects of these challenges can be frightening, but I would hate to see what happens to a person after a Brussels sprout chow down. That would be for an episode of Dirty Jobs.

Since I was successful in spending my time wisely this morning, I probably should do some homework. Anthropology is a very interesting discipline, but I’m not going to make a career change. If I did pursue anthropology more, I could write my master’s thesis on the dietary traditions of pirates. Probably less bacon and more parrots.

03-20-2011

2011-03-20T14:15:00.000-07:00

Once again I’m explaining to parents how their child is performing in the classroom. It’s report card time. And again, it’s an exercise in self-examining my abilities as a teacher. Every time I write about some difficulty a student had last quarter, I wonder if it could have been avoided if I had done something sooner about it. Probably. Every time I write about some achievement a student attained, I wonder if they would have made that progress without me, on their own. Probably. In my first year I’m hoping I just don’t stunt their growth. I don’t allow them to drink coffee in class just in case.

This weekend was the village’s annual potlatch. This is a native celebration where people gather to eat, dance, and exchange gifts. This has also been a time when families display their wealth. Villages will invite a nearby village to come to the potlatch; in our case it was Scammon Bay. Scammon Bay is about 50 miles from here, so they converged upon us in snowmobiles. Without doing an official count, I do believe we may have doubled our population this weekend.

The potlatch is held in the tribal community hall. In a village of less than 200 people, the tribal hall isn’t that big. So Friday night it was full. There were seats for most of the adult people. Apparently the kids are encouraged to enter and exit the hall as many times as they can. Maybe there is a cultural contest with that, but man, that door stayed open more than it was shut. Which wasn’t a bad thing since it was about 100 degrees in there. This was my first social outing in a long time and I was a bit rusty on how I was supposed to carry myself. Plus, this is a different culture, so I was unsure if I should remove my hat when I entered the hall (I didn’t), if there were certain places I shouldn’t sit (first come/first serve), or if pants were optional (nope, required). If you want to know more about how a potlatch is carried out, Google it.

A couple of my students had their first dance at the potlatch. Their families passed out gifts to the guests and the kids were dressed up in their mukluks, a headdress, and feather fans for their dance. It’s a pretty neat celebration and I know the community put in a lot of time practicing for the past few weeks. They would practice dancing from 7-11pm each night, which meant there were a lot of tired kids the past few weeks at school.

Our weather has broken from the past few weeks. We’ve had nice weather, getting to zero at night and in the upper teens for the daytime. No clouds or winds, so it was pleasant for walking to and from school. This weekend, it has warmed up to the low 30’s, with the arrival of wind and clouds. We’ve had a few inches of new snow, but it’s been blowing around, so who knows where it is. The awful news is that the weather affects my ability to receive my Dish Network signal. Since the NCAA Tournament is the only thing in full bloom up here, I was looking forward to watching some games this weekend. Nope. Plus it affects the internet here too, so I have sloooow speeds. I have troubles even getting email at these speeds, so it is difficult to get scores.

Two more weeks until Monica shows up. Being a bachelor was much more fun when beer and pizza was available for purchase. Being a bachelor up here just means I’m the only one to do laundry. I have learned that the word “clean” is relative. As the only one doing the laundry in my house, I get to determine how clean a shirt is. My rule is as long as I don’t wear it two days in a row, it’s clean. Maybe Monica will change my reference, but for now I’m holding fast to that. I won’t go into my new position on personal hygiene. It is rather personal.

03-12-2011

2011-03-12T19:11:00.000-08:00

The earthquake in Japan and the subsequent tsunamis that followed forced me to face the obvious question: will washing my delicates in warm water wear them out faster? While I was asking my co-workers about my concerns, the talked turned to leaving town in the event of a tsunami. We don’t have any roads that lead out of town, but it doesn’t matter since there are no cars that could use that road. One of the aides said she’d just hop on her snowmachine and head for the hills. “And leave me here?” I asked. We sat in awkward silence until she finally said, “I don’t think flannel counts as a delicate. I wouldn’t worry about washing them in warm water.” Good to know.

The options are limited in the village as to how to escape a tsunami. We are about two miles from the Bering Sea and sit at near sea level. Besides trying to outrun the water with a snowmachine, every other scenario seemed to have us getting wet as the common thread. Our best means to possibly surviving one would be to find a ladder, prop it up on the wall, and climb up to the roof of the school. The single story building is the tallest point for miles. And I mean at least 15 miles. I don’t know how many people will fit up there, but I hid the only ladder in the village, so I know I’ll be the first one up.

School is continuing to chug along. We don’t have a spring break and I think the students are beginning to get tired of listening to me. Actually that occurred on September 14^th, at 10:23 am. They’ve just been tolerating me since then. One of my students decided to lie down on the floor instead of doing his work yesterday. As I squatted to attempt to persuade him to sit in his chair, I ripped the crotch of my jeans. The first thing I thought was I had just tore my hamstring. A quick check ended my fear and began a new one. The student hadn’t noticed because he was loudly explaining to me that he didn’t think it was possible for him to get back into his chair. I slowly stood up, still a little concerned about my hamstring. I made my way to my desk and he found he could get back up to his chair. I sat behind my desk for the remaining half-hour so I kept the catastrophe under wraps. I think I took four minutes off my walk home, what with the three-inch crotch rip, the wind, and the single digit temperature.

The basketball season ended last week abruptly, due to lack of interest. It is a shame when there are only five players, because it only takes one’s decision to determine what happens to the team. We only had one week left, but they will miss a trip out of town. The elementary team is in Hooper Bay right now playing their district tournament, so the school does have a team to cheer for. I watched a little bit of one game at our school on our closed circuit TV system we use for meetings. They set it up so they could broadcast our games. This is nice since it is hard for the families of the players, or anybody else for that matter, to make the trip for the tournament. There were a few people watching it this morning in the library.

Monica will be here in less than three weeks, so I have some house cleaning to do. I finally figured out what that thing was on the vacuum cleaner: it’s called the on/off switch. I also ordered some groceries so we don’t have to eat rice with every meal. I don’t want her to come for a visit and then decide not to come up here next year, so I have to prepare some new menu items. I have some Tang left, so maybe an orange glaze over a roasted Spam. And now that I've fixed the problem with the vacuum cleaner for her, how can she not want to return?

03-04-2011

2011-03-04T22:45:00.000-08:00

I knew when I came up here to teach I would be experiencing many new things. The obvious one was starting a new job. Not so obvious was having to get on an airplane with five middle school basketball players and be in their charge. After we had boarded the five-seat Cesena, the pilot looked at me and asked if we were ready. I looked at him and squeaked out a weak “help!” He must have thought I said, “Sure, I’m an adult and have chosen to be responsible for these five kids”, because he said, “Good” and started the engine. I realized I had better become an adult fast.

We landed in Marshall at 7:30 Friday night and were immediately shown our room. Our room served as a 3^rd grade classroom just a few hours before. The leftovers of a popcorn party remained on the same floor we were going to roll our sleeping bags out on. We didn’t have to wait around for long because our first game was at 8. The pregame pep talk consisted of me asking if anyone needed to pee. When I was finished in the bathroom, we were ready to go.

Deciding who started and who got to keep me company on the bench is easy when there are only five players. The team is coed with one girl. Shortly after the third quarter started, I had company. One of our players fouled out about two minutes into the third quarter. I’m convinced he fouled out because he just wanted to listen to me calmly guide my team from the front row. I did find it odd that he wouldn’t come sit next to me. Now we had only four players to finish the second half of the game. I tried to recall some inspirational moments from the movie Hoosiers to tell the kids, but all I could do is ask if anyone had to pee.

We limped through that game and then turned around and played the next game. After two games in a row with no subs, our kids were dragging. It was also getting late. The curfew in Marshall is midnight, so they had time to play two more games which did not include us. The other teams had plenty of players, so they had the luxury of having players who were not begging to come out of the game. My players would ask, “Can I come out for a few minutes?” I would explain to them that we couldn’t sit anyone out because we had nobody to come in for them. They would listen intently, nod and ask, “Yeah, but can I come out for a few minutes?”

That night the kids learned about leg cramps. I shared the classroom with the four boys, and they thought they were about to loose their legs. They spent over an hour cooped up in a small Cessna on the way up there, then played two games in the next two hours. So when their legs started cramping, they became very interested in what I had to say about cramps. I remembered my late father’s medical advice and passed it along to my players: "Does it hurt when you do that? Don’t do that!" They didn’t enjoy that.

We made it home the next day only a few hours late. We were tired because we played two more games that morning before coming home. I say we because I was up until 3am listening to them take turns complaining about the cramps. Taking turns meant they were coming together as a team. But their legs were healed by morning and I heard nothing more about them, even on the way home. I sat up front in the co-pilot’s seat again, but this time a good-looking blond was the pilot. And she is on the Flying Wild Alaska TV show. I’m pretty sure she was hitting on me, but I’ll write about that in the next post. First, I have to make a phone call to my wife and notify her about this.

02-19-2011

2011-02-19T17:20:00.000-08:00

February may be the shortest month of the calendar year, but it can seem to drag on. Since the winters start early and end after the rest of the country, March really isn’t anything to look forward to. It’ll still be cold with no anticipation of spring yet. But on the bright side, the landscape changes almost daily as the snowdrifts shift around, trying to find a place to call home.

Another reason that the second half of the year seems to drag on is because we will have zero school days off until the year is done. From Christmas break to May 18, we do not have any three-day weekends or a spring break to look forward to. I do think it is better to push through and have a longer summer break, so I’ll quit bitching for now.

I was offered a contract for next school year and I have signed and turned it in. Some of the districts up here obviously want to know who’s coming back, so they offer contracts much earlier than most districts elsewhere. Monica will be joining me here next year, which will make the year much better because I miss her. It will also mean a more varied diet for me. I don’t think Monica will want to eat the same three-meal rotation I have right now. None of them include vegetables, so that part will change for me. She informs me that coffee can’t be considered a vegetable unless I actually eat it. I know what you’re thinking, but she said no soup.

I’ve also taken on another job: Jr. High basketball coach. This is a co-ed team and I have 5 players. I didn’t start out as the coach because I am taking 6 credits this semester and didn’t have the time. The coach decided he couldn’t finish the season, so he quit. That left the team without a coach and me without a team. We don’t always get along, but I think we’re having fun. I have found the time and it’s from 5-6:30pm, Monday through Friday.

When I coached high school basketball at Waterville, I had a great mentor in Dick Stoddard. Unfortunately, Dick is not here, so I’m having to figure things out on my own. We have a road trip next weekend and the kids are very excited about this. Marshall is a village that is about 70 miles up the Yukon. I think traveling to another village is more important to them than the game. And I don’t blame them. This gives them the opportunity to spend time in another village and meet other kids. The teams stay at the school, so they’ll have 36 hrs to run around and eat candy and down energy drinks. They also think that resting in sleeping bags on the floor of a classroom is fun: I disagree. I see everyday what happens on a classroom floor. I’m not looking forward to having a pillow as the only barrier between my head and a classroom floor. I may sleep in the teacher’s chair. That isn’t really a consolation because I know what can happen in a teacher’s chair. Of course, not to my chair, but other chairs.

This trip will help shorten the month for me. I will be able to make a visit to the store in Marshall so I can get some eggs, potatoes, and onions. This will give me another meal to put into my three-meal rotation, at least for a few weeks. Until I run out eggs. I suppose I could purchase some fresh vegetables, but I don’t have much room and I have to prioritize. Plus, potatoes and onions are bonafide vegetables. The eggs will help supplement my cholesterol plan with the Spam.

02-13-2011

2011-02-13T20:22:00.000-08:00

I usually write my blog on Saturday mornings, after a pot of coffee and watching 3 hours of cartoons. But this weekend was different; we had a basketball tournament at our school. Alakanuk and Marshall showed up for a two-day set of games. They didn’t “just” show up, we knew they were coming, so we prepared. So I’m posting this a day late. Not that it matters, but at least Monica will know what I’m up to. That reminds me, I should call her one of these days.

One of my extra duties at the school is doing jobs “as assigned by the principal”. This means he gives me the "opportunity to gain valuable experience" on the jobs he doesn't want to do. (Plus the authority to use quotations as much as I want.) My valuable experience this weekend was to make sure the tournament ran smoothly.

I’ve mentioned before in my blog that when teams play, everyone stays at the school since we have no hotels in the villages. The teams sleep in our classrooms and the kitchen staff comes in to prepare food so everyone can eat. Things almost turn terrible for the kids this weekend.

There was a potlatch, a Yupik celebration, being held upriver this weekend. Many people, including our kitchen staff, planned on going to the potlatch. We were stuck with no kitchen help. When she made this announcement, the others helping out this weekend nervously looked at me. And not just because I was showing off my new sock puppets perform a new play I had written. I knew I had to do something to instill confidence, so I asked the cook where the Spam was. Now she looked nervously at me, but I think this time it had something to do with the sock puppets. Luckily for everyone involved, a snowmobile failure meant she couldn’t go. I know she was disappointed, but the kids were happy that they didn’t have to eat chili and rice for breakfast. Oh well, there was more for my breakfast.

The tourney went off without any problems. We were able to play 8 games and I only had to referee one game. I’ve found there is no quicker way to anger a crowd of people than by putting on a striped shirt and a whistle. My biggest problem was that I thought it was a dodge ball game for the first three minutes. Once they explained it was basketball and took my puppets away, the game resumed. Luckily there were others who could ref the other games and I was once again able to stand in front of the concession stand and tell kids to stop running in the hall. Yeah, I’m turning into that guy. One funny and new event for me to witness was one of our players standing in line at the concession stand. I peeked in the gym to see our team on the court, playing a game. I looked back at the player (one of my students) wearing his uniform proudly and ordering candy. Everyone seemed ok with it, even the teacher who smiled and told him good luck as she handed him his candy. But, I’m not the coach, so I only hoped that I didn’t have a mess to clean up on the court.

I dropped the last team off at the airstrip at 4pm yesterday in -20 degrees temperatures and was finished cleaning up by 5. I got home in time to watch 3 episodes of the Flying Wild Alaska show on discovery. That gave me time to mull over my reality show and to ask myself the question everyone has been asking themselves: Why in the hell are there so many reality shows about cupcakes? And why isn’t one enough? Add a sock puppet or two, now you have a show.

02-05-2011

2011-02-05T13:02:00.000-08:00

I started watching a new show on Discovery called Flying Wild Alaska. It follows pilots who fly for a small airline, Era, out of Unalakleet, AK, a village about 90 miles NE from my village. This airline is one of the two that fly in and out of Nunam Iqua. In the winter, they are the only ones bringing people, mail, and food to the villages. As you can tell, this makes them important out here.

That got me thinking; with all of the reality shows going on here in Alaska, maybe they’d have one about Sarah Palin landing airplanes in her Alaska. Or maybe one could follow teachers at school in rural Alaska. I’m not sure how Sarah could wedge her way into this one, but I’ll let her figure it out.

The film crew could follow the daily activities of three new teachers, just learning how to teach in a classroom full of kids. But on top of that, they will be living in an entirely new culture, one where they become the out-group. They will have no transportation except their own legs. They would also be faced with intermittent water and sewer usage. And in this case, there would be no store to purchase food or any other materials they may find essential. Need to use the post office? Try Saturday morning; since that is the only time we can get there when it is open.

You might think this would be a drama, but you would be incorrect. This would be a comedy reality show, and one without a Snookie or a housewife. If I’m allowed to be a producer on the show, I’ll try to get one of the Kardashians, but only for ratings. We also wouldn’t be voting anyone off, because I’m not ready to leave and I know I’d be the first one they’d vote off. And we won’t have a shirtless weigh-in like Biggest Loser, because I would get voted off after that scene.

The show would center on the daily life of the three teachers. The main teacher, a handsome man, in a doughy and balding sort of way, would bring all of his 44 years of wisdom into the classroom. The two minor teachers in the show will be young and inexperienced in life and in the classroom. They will be puzzled about some things and have to ask the star of the show to explain. Questions like: “Why do you always run like a scared rabbit whenever you see a dog?” (To be honest, it looked just like a wolf.) “How can you never eat vegetables and still be alive?” (Grass is a vegetable, cows eat grass, I eat cows; therefore, I eat vegetables.) “Why do you start to whimper whenever someone walks into your room?” (Again, it looked just like a wolf.) They would use their good-humored kidding during lunchtime in the teacher’s lounge, asking the main character to go find a different place to eat or at least use a spoon when eating out of a peanut butter jar. My good-natured retort would be to wipe my hands on my pants and remind Miss Manners that we’re teachers, not TV stars. Then I’d chuckle and walk back to my room while the others would do their best to look disgusted.

This sounds like a no-brainer for the producers of reality television and I’m at a loss as to why I haven’t seen anything like it on TV. Maybe they’re just waiting for the right opportunity to showcase someone. And if I’m chosen, I promise that I wouldn’t become big-time and do things like trim my beard weekly or change socks frequently. I’m also working on another reality show called Janitor Wars. I don’t have all the details, but I think it will be about janitors. I’ll keep everyone posted.

01-29-2011

2011-01-29T10:00:00.000-08:00

I don’t know why it takes me so long to see movies that everyone else has seen. Oh yeah, I’m lazy. Some will consider being too lazy to participate in an activity where you just sit there and let people act out a story for your entertainment the epitome of laziness. To them I say that I can fit nine Ho-Hos in my mouth at one time. That takes time and dedication in order to perform that feat, proving that I am capable of hard work and focus.

When the temperature is 20 below and wind gusts to 40mph, I find it a bit daunting to spend time outside. Last weekend I stayed home and watched The Shawshank Redemption for the first time. I am a bit troubled that it took so long for me to finally get around to watching that movie. It was a great movie. It also got me thinking about other movies made from Steven King books. Then I stopped, because I don’t think watching a Steven King marathon in the middle of the dark winter here would have positive affects on one’s mental health. Plus all of that work, just sitting there, watching movies.

We had a slight cold snap this past week, with only one frozen water pipe at the school that broke. All of the teacher’s houses pipes were ok, with the exception of one, which was frozen for a short time. The wind will find nooks and crannies and freeze pipes that had been safe for years. Our houses sit on stilts so I am glad I have good slippers. I haven’t had many problems this winter except for one frozen pipe last month. The furnace may be old, but it keeps the house warm.

We had a community meeting at the school last week, as we do a few times during the school year. This meeting is for the community to hear about what we’re doing at the school, and it gives them a chance to talk with the staff and tour the classrooms. Notes are sent home with the students and placards are posted at the post office and laundry mat. The meeting was to start at 6pm and at 6:30 we shut the doors after nobody showed up. This was a disappointment to us, but it does point out the disconnect between the community and the school. The turnout at our parent/teacher conferences was also disappointing. I know that at other schools in our district the turnout is much higher, so I know it can be done.

These kids are tough out here. Last week it was 20 below zero and kids were still outside playing. These same kids make it to school on time almost everyday. I think my attendance rate is around 95%. Since most of the students don’t have satellite TV, or video games to play at home, they must find school more enjoyable than staying at home. We’ve had days when it has been a blizzard outside, but the kids are lined up at the outside door, waiting for the 8am opening. It sure makes my job much easier when they are in school daily and I don’t have to try to catch them up. I have enough trouble myself keeping up.

I’ve been spared strange dreams this week, so I haven’t had that on my mind. It is stormy this weekend, so my TV reception is out. This will give me time to catch up on my podcasts and maybe read a little. But, I did see that there is a new movie about Navy jet pilots I want to watch. I think it’s called Top Gun. If my signal returns I might watch that tonight.

01-22-2011

2011-01-22T13:46:00.000-08:00

Sigmund Freud said that dreams are subconscious wishes to be interpreted. Dreams of achievement I can see; but what about dreams that I have that are disturbing? And what if your dream of achievement is also disturbing? That kind of dream has got to be rough. Luckily, I don’t have too many disturbing dreams. Similarly, I don’t have dreams of achievement either; they’re mostly about food. And me eating it.

The other night I had a disturbing dream. The dream was about myself and a guy who I don’t know. Oh yeah, and we were fighting two midgets. I don’t know why we were fighting them, but I was sure angry with one of them. Maybe he stole a pie I was eating. He would just keep mocking me and staying just out of me reach. I remember yelling at him just before I woke up: “Get over here you *&%$#ing midget!” When I woke up, I was appalled at myself for calling someone a midget. Not that I was trying to beat him up, but I called him a midget. I’m not sure why I would have a dream like that, since I don’t find them menacing in any way. Nor have I met anyone who is a little person. I did watch Elf recently and I think that might be the root of it all.

Luckily this dream doesn’t correlate to my job of teaching people who are short in stature and sometimes mock me. Oh wait…. This was brought up by one of my coworkers. I scoffed at her hypothesis but was interrupted when I had to chase after a student who took one of my cookies from my desk. Ok, that scenario didn’t happen, but one of my coworkers did wonder if my dreams were related to my job. I don’t subscribe to Freud’s school of thought on dreams, so I scoffed her. I enjoy a good scoffing once in a while.

Other than the weird dream, my week went smoothly. We had parent/teacher conferences this week. I did not get the turn out I was hoping for, but the kids still keep coming to school, so that is the most important part. Report cards were sent out and none came back with angry comments. Since we use a standards based system, our report cards have no grades, but show actual progress in their level standards.

I’m also starting my schooling again. I’m taking two classes from UAF to complete my teacher certification in the state of Alaska. These are both done online, so I don’t have to do any traveling to complete them. And unlike last time I went to college, I won’t get angry looks for learning in my underwear. A downside to the classes is that I won’t be able to watch The Biggest Loser. But as TV programming geniuses would have it, I can watch back-to-back episodes of Man Vs Food instead, so I think it’s a good trade off. Plus, I won’t feel guilty eating food that some would consider bad for me. Adam Richmond does not judge, he enjoys.

Well, I’ve awkwardly tied together a bizarre dream with my uneventful week. I think my new goal here should be to ramble on about topics that have nothing in common, while pretending that they do. I have been doing that in my classroom, so I see no problem doing it here. I don’t think I will bring up my bizarre dream to the class, just in case some of them subscribe to Freud’s thoughts on dreams. And luckily we won’t have to watch Elf until next year.

01-15-2011

2011-01-15T13:00:00.001-08:00

The time has come to fill out report cards again. The first time I did this, I was haunted by memories of my own childhood. This time as I fill out report cards, I’m anticipate getting to the card of the turd who called me “bald head”. I applaud his bravado, but I may write something about his lack of effort in his insult. . I wondered, as a child, if the teachers felt a sense of responsibility about the trauma some of us received after we handed the report card to our parents.

The kids settled into school pretty quickly from their winter break. It took me longer to acclimate to the routine of having to put pants on before noon. None of my students left the village during break, so there were no stories to be told. They just marched into the classroom and quietly laid their heads on their desks. I anticipated being a referee to their excitement of being back. Instead I had to try to keep them from falling asleep.

One of the students asked me the question everyone was waiting for: “What did you bring us?” As a teacher, it is my duty to help all of them learn about life. These young, impressionable minds need to see what life holds for them. So I confidently stood before them and said, “Nothing”. They didn’t take it as well as I’d hoped. Actually, they all kind of turned on me. I tried to calm them down by explaining that I needed all of my suitcase space for cheese, butter, and meat. They didn’t care. Then I tried the tactic of turning it around on them. I asked them “What did you get me?” It didn’t work. I started to panic, because all I saw were 14 wolverines glaring at me, waiting for one more lame excuse. I inhaled, smiled and bravely said, “We’re going to have popcorn!” They were fooled by the diversion and I lived to teach another day.

We lost one of our teachers over the winter break. Well, we didn’t lose him; he just went to Montana and never came back. This is something that is common out here. First year teachers will sometimes decide it isn’t worth it and decide to stay home instead of returning. One of our teachers has been here for 6 years and he said this is the 5^th teacher here to quit during the school year. It doesn’t take long to climb up the seniority ladder here.

Well, back to the report cards. I do feel some responsibility about consequences from what I write on the report cards. Whatever is written on the card is a reflection of how I did my job the last quarter. If the student didn’t do very well, I have to take some of the responsibility for that. So I’ll work harder on developing creativity in the classroom, because “bald-head” is just too obvious. When I was called “Stink-butt” by a kindergartener, I know their teacher swelled with pride. I just hope Stink-butt wasn’t too obvious.

01-06-2011

2011-01-06T22:21:00.000-08:00

Lazy

–adjective

averse or disinclined to work, activity, or exertion; indolent.

causing idleness or indolence: a hot, lazy afternoon.

slow-moving; sluggish: a lazy stream.

(of a livestock brand) placed on its side instead of upright.

Just to set the record straight, I cut and pasted from Dictionary.com. Well, I didn’t. I had a student do it for me. I was going to have him also paste the word ‘apathy’, but it was…… Anyways, my vacation is over and it’s time I get back to whatever this is.

Flying in and out of here can be tricky. When I flew out of here before Christmas, I barley made it out. Flights were grounded because of weather, but there was a chartered flight bringing some students home from a boarding school. My principal was also trying to get to Anchorage, so he was able to get us on the flight by knowing who to call. One of the teachers was supposed to leave the next day for Hawaii. She was delayed for three days, so now Aloha has yet another meaning. But I don’t think they’ll use this one for their new brochures.

I arrived in Anchorage at 9:53pm and arrived at the first airport lounge at 9:58. Without a word, the bartender pulled the lever and let the amber liquid flow. Then without a word, he handed it to the waitress who walked to the other end of the room and gave it to some duffus wearing a Yankee’s cap. Once I remembered how to order a beer (10:01), I was reacquainted with an old friend after 126 days. At 10:09pm I had to pee.

The trip from Nunam Iqua to Wenatchee took me just under 22 hours, which included circling Wenatchee for an hour waiting for a weather window. I do understand how lucky I was to leave on time and arrive within one hour of what my ticket said. Monica recognized me, which made me happy. I hadn’t had a haircut or shaved since I left, so I was looking a bit unkempt. And I mean unkempt in a refined way.

I had a great time during my two weeks home. The only complaint was that the time seemed to flash by. And that there were too many people at the Wal-Marts. And traffic was a problem. And I ate too much. Wait, that’s not a complaint, that’s just normal. I was able to see my family and friends, which is why I came down. Everyone seemed to agree that two weeks was enough, and that I should head north.

The trip back to Alaska was very uneventful. I would even go as far as to say it was pleasant. I never had more than 1 ½ hours between my three airplane changes, which is something I’ll never see again. I also had the great fortune to sit in first class from Seattle to Bethel. A teacher in first class is very unusual, so I thought I’d be out of place. Turns out that crab boat people enjoy more legroom too. Scruffy beards and flannel shirts were everywhere, sipping champagne and laughing at the poor people in coach. Ok, we didn’t have champagne, but I did feel superior because of my proximity to the door. For once, I got to be the jackass holding everyone up while I put my coat on and struggled to pull my oversized carryon out of the overhead. I think I can get used to first class, if I didn’t have to pay for it. I lucked out and only paid an $80 extra fee to upgrade. Who knew 80 bucks could make a guy feel better than others?

The second half of my first year here is started and it will probably move at the same pace as the first half did: quickly. It’s hard to believe that the first half is done and no students have been injured. At least not by me. I told those kids not to stand that close to the shore.

Absolve

verb (used with object), -solved, -solv·ing.

to free from guilt or blame or their consequences: The court absolved her of guilt in his death.

to set free or release, as from some duty, obligation, or responsibility (usually fol. by from ): to be absolved from one's oath.

to grant pardon for.

Ecclesiastical .

to grant or pronounce remission of sins to.

to remit (a sin) by absolution.

to declare (censure, as excommunication) removed.

12-11-2010

2010-12-11T16:22:00.000-08:00

We have one more week of school until winter break starts. I’m looking forward to spending a few weeks with my wife back in Wenatchee. When she asked me what I wanted to do when I got home, everything I thought about involved eating. And if it didn’t involve eating, it was sandwiched between eating. Yes, I know I just used a delicious combination of meat, cheese, mayo and bread as a verb.

This past week I said a phrase that I’ve never said before. No, it wasn’t, “No thanks, I’m full” or “I think I’ve had enough to drink” or “Now that I look at it that way, I can see how I was mistaken”. As I was sitting at my desk looking out the window, I said “What a beautiful sunrise this afternoon!” The shortest day of the year is still a week and a half away, but it does take awhile for the sun to come out now. The horizon starts to lighten at about 10:30, but it takes until after 12:00 to fully come over the horizon. Even when it does, it doesn’t get very high in the sky, like in the summer. It hangs just above the horizon, uneasy to stray too far in the sky.

Last week also included Pearl Harbor Day, 69 years after the attack. I asked the class on Tuesday morning what had happened 69 years ago. I don’t think anyone watched CNN that morning because the only answer that followed was “that the dinosaurs became extinct”. I guess their teacher should get on the ball and teach them something. I had told the class earlier in the school year that I had been stationed at Pearl Harbor, so of course they all wanted to know if I was there during the attack. I hope I convinced them with a time-line that there were many years between the attack on Pearl Harbor and my birth. Now I have to convince one student that when I was born, dinosaurs were not roaming the planes; they were busy being oil.

With less than a week until I head south, I’m trying to decide how to pack. I will have to wear my cold weather gear because we are below zero here, and it looks like it will stay that way for a while. I need my parka and boots for the plane ride to Bethel, but I don’t want to wear them once I get on a big plane, since they take up a lot of room and aren’t very comfortable. But I need them incase I have to stand outside at one of these little airports here. This decision will take up most of my time between now and when I leave, so at least I’ll keep busy. Plus I’ll have to decide my meal plan when I’m home. Maybe if I’d spend as much time planning what I will teach as I spend planning what I will eat, my students wouldn’t confuse me with the Flintstones. I’ll get to that right after I figure out what I’m going to make for lunch.

12-4-2010

2010-12-04T12:56:00.000-08:00

I wish I could get excited about snow the way kids do. There is joy in their eyes as they watch it fall. These kids have lived their entire lives in Alaska and still run to the window when someone says, “Hey, it’s snowing!” They also run to the window when I say, “Is that a bear eating a bucket of chicken?” The reason they have such delight in their eyes when they see snow is because they never had to pick up a shovel and move the snow.

I guess snow can be fun until you’re up to your greater trochanter in a snowdrift (look it up on WebMD, and no, it’s not dirty). The wind blows most of the time here and the snow is able to organize itself and block our way to the school. I had to help a fellow teacher out of one of those drifts yesterday morning. When she asked for help, I explained that I didn’t want to be an enabler, so she should learn how to work her own way out of the snowdrift. I couldn’t see her face since it was dark, and I couldn’t hear what she was shouting at me because of the wind. I’m sure she was smiling and thanking me for the sage advice. I wonder what she’ll get me for Christmas this year.

I hate to darken the mood of this blog with sadness, but I received some terrible news yesterday. The Nalley’s chili plant in Tacoma is being shut down and will be moved to Iowa. I hope it’s not something I said or did. Iowa for God’s sake! First, they took our basketball team and now our chili. Wait, that was Oklahoma. This outsourcing of our jobs has to stop.

With no disrespect to SPAM, I do have a favorite food that I eat up here. It is Nalley’s chili over rice, with cheddar and Tabasco. I learned of this culinary delight while I lived in Hawaii. Chili and rice is popular there, as is any food and rice. I eat chili and rice 2-3 times a week because it is easy to make and so damned delicious. But now I’m not sure if it will still be available. It’s too soon to start looking for other brands. Even if I try a new chili, I’ll still be thinking of Nalley’s. Nalley’s, I will not accept your friendship request on Facebook.

With the calendar showing that my trip south is getting closer, I’m getting anxious about the weather. If the weather is not cooperating, aircraft can be grounded for long periods. This past week we had visitors from the state department of education and they had their stay extended by two days. They sat in classrooms with their bags at their side for two days, waiting for a break in the weather. Although they were eager to run to the window to see if it was still snowing, they weren’t enthusiastic about a bear eating fried chicken. Apparently they aren’t very curious.

11-27-2010

2010-11-27T14:23:00.000-08:00

Now that Thanksgiving is over with, the countdown begins for the next major holiday: Groundhog Day. When the Groundhog pokes his head out of the hole and gives presents to all the boys and girls, we know in our hearts that this is what makes this country great. That and a fast food restaurant that cavalierly discards the bun in favor of more chicken.

We had an impromptu holiday dinner at my house on Friday. My place was chosen because I happen to have a table large enough to fit seven people, not because of my hosting abilities. And I have a TV. The weird part was nobody but me cared that there was football on. We had moose, swan, and lots of stuffing. I didn’t have to break out the turkey SPAM to share with the guests, so the dinner was a success. The swan, moose and cranberry sauce were all locally hunted or foraged by someone other than me. Monica sent my green bean casserole ingredients, so I can’t really claim to have contributed much to the dinner. I did use a manual can opener for the beans.

With no radio station in the area, I have been curious about how the kids find different kinds of music. Not many of the houses here have satellite TV and even less have Internet access. I suppose they get some of their musical taste from their parents, just like I did. One of the first singers I remember listening to when I was little was Johnny Cash. The other day I was absently humming Ring of Fire, when one of my students materialized beside me and began singing along. I asked him if he knew any other Cash songs. Listening to an 8yr old’s rendition of The Ballad of Ira Hayes with a Yupik accent is something. I think a person can go anywhere in the world and still find a Johnny Cash fan. We were on break, so I brought up iTunes and started choosing Cash songs. Since they will only give you 30 seconds of each song, he was yelling at my computer because the songs were interrupted. I did have two Cash songs on my computer, but I don’t think he’s ready for Cocaine Blues. At least I’m not ready to listen to an 8yr old sing it.

With only three more weeks until school is out for the break, I’m getting excited. I will leave directly from my classroom to the airport on the 17^th. I can walk from the school to the airport in about the time it takes to walk through a major airport anywhere else. When I say we have an airport here, I don’t mean to imply there is a building. We have a gravel runway with a turnout to pick up passengers and turnaround so it can take off again but no TSA pat downs. I will have a four-hour layover in Anchorage, so I may try to get to know a nice bartender while I’m there.

Since I don’t have any leftovers from the holiday dinner, I have to continue eating what I normally do. Eating turkey for the next week would be nice, but I don’t have that option. I think I may try a new SPAM sandwich, but this time without the bread. Colonel, you are a genius.

11-25-2010

2010-11-25T12:22:00.000-08:00

I’m sitting here wondering what to watch on TV. On one channel, the View offers great insight in many of today’s most important topics. For example, I never would have thought to use my extra moisturizing cream as a laxative. On another channel, I can watch a sack of hot air shaped as a character, entertain and receive cheers from a crowd of holiday-crazed onlookers. Or, I could watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. (I hope Oprah isn’t reading this.)

I was able to eat Thanksgiving dinner a day early. The school put on a holiday dinner for the community yesterday, which drew a crowd of a hundred or so. The cooks did a great job of cooking turkeys, potatoes, stuffing, fry bread, cake and the rest of the feast. My job was to be the Thanksgiving Grinch, chasing students off the climbing bars in the gym and telling them to stop running around the tables. The kids decided to make a game out of it by pretending to ignore my scowls and harsh words.

Monica has taken care of my Thanksgiving feast for me. She, along with her mom, packed a box full of traditional cuisine; including stuffing, gravy, pumpkin bread mix, and turkey SPAM. SPAM is there when your family can’t. Maybe I should submit that to their ad campaign people. When I proposed that same idea to the fine people at Jim Beam, I received a lukewarm reaction. Which was better than the response I got from Coors about bacon flavored beer. It was a letter from their attorneys, demanding I stop sending them letters. Whatever dummies; I’ll continue to take a bite of bacon and a drink of Henry’s.

I would like to say that I am thankful for Monica, allowing me to quit my secure job and go back to school to become a teacher. She’ll come up here next year, and begin her career change. Teaching couples are very valuable to school districts up here, so we both should have jobs as soon as she’s done with her college. Then she can write a blog and I can become lazier than I already am.

I am going to get back to watching TV. I’ll sit back and watch the NFL all day and forget about the parades. I was looking forward to seeing the Glenn Beck balloon, but they had troubles with it, so it’s a no-go. Apparently the substance he was filled with couldn’t get it aloft. I guess warm crap and tears don’t float.

11-20-2010

2010-11-20T15:10:00.000-08:00

I want to warn you before you begin; this post will cover subject matter that is considered boring by regular folk. Those who do find this interesting, please put down the sharp object you are holding and move away from the children.

In our district, we don’t give out grades and we don’t promote students to the next grade at the end of the school year the same way traditional schools do. We are on a standards based system, where each subject has a set of standards that a student has to master before moving to that subject’s next level. In the traditional system, a student would move to the next grade at the end of the school year, assuming he passed, moving up in all subjects (math, science, reading). In our system, the subjects are not tied to each other for movement. The student advances a level when that particular subject level has been mastered. Mastering includes presentations, tests, and other work. When all of the standards in a particular subject have been mastered, the student must pass an end of level assessment in order to move up to the next level in that subject. This would work great if all students advanced at the same pace. They don’t. A student could be in the 4^th grade, but be in level 3 in math and level 5 in reading. Some 4^th graders are almost done with their science standards in level 4, but others have just started, making it difficult to teach to each student at their current standard level. Excuse me; I just gave myself a nosebleed typing this. It’s really much more complicated than it sounds.

I think this approach to education can work, but it will need some tweaking to get it right. If I could convince the students that it is some sort of Pac-Man game, eating his way to each level, this could be a motivator for them. (I realize I’m dating myself when I reference a video game and Pac-Man is what comes to mind.) I am aware of the arguments against the standards based system, and have made many myself. But by trying new approaches like this, we can improve how we educate our children. Learning how to differentiate teaching to each student is the difficult part. (I told you it was going to be boring.)

I now wish one of my superhuman abilities would be to teach to each student at an individual level. Since we can only choose three abilities (don’t be greedy), I would have to give one up I’ve already wished for. I think I want to keep the invisibility power. It would come in handy during those awkward moments at a dinner party, when it is my turn to contribute something intelligent to the conversation. Instead of sharing the time I got my head stuck in the staircase banister, I could quietly disappear and go back to the bar for another drink. To be honest, I’ve never been to a dinner party and nobody has ever turned to me with expectations of something intelligent coming out of my mouth. But I’m keeping it just in case. I’d probably trade my ability to walk fast. I know that isn’t really superhumany, but I think I would use it more than some sort of fast running ability. I really don’t have anywhere to be that quickly. So my ability to walk fast will be traded for the ability to teach my students at an individual level. The other superhuman ability I will keep will be my power to pretend to care about other people’s problems.

This is the kind of blog you get when nothing exciting happens here during the week. Tying together a standards based system with superhuman powers in one post is not easy. Or as you have just witnessed, not possible. Last week, I had the great fortune of watching a dog take a crap on a frozen lake. No such luck this week. I have not seen a cat in the village yet, but they’re not that funny anyway. They are more discrete about where they crap.

11-13-2010

2010-11-13T11:25:00.000-08:00

I have just a little over a month until I’m going home for the winter break. 34 days, 6 hours, and 14 minutes to be exact. The other day, someone asked me what I missed most. The first thing that popped into my head was what I said: “Beer and Pizza”. If that person asking that question had been a guy, the conversation would have ended there, with a nod in agreement. Unfortunately, the questioning individual was a female. “Beer and pizza? Not your wife?” In hindsight, my best response would have been to pull the fire alarm and run, but no, I continued. I explained that Beer and Pizza was my term of endearment for my wife. I know she didn’t believe me, but I cannot back down now. Like a teachable moment, this should have been a learnable moment for me, but I really doubt it was.

Teachable moments are moments that arise unexpectedly throughout the day and can be used to help educate a student. Sometimes I am present when they happen. I will occasionally take a student out for a walk in the hall as reward for good behavior. The reward isn’t really the walk; it is the candy I hand out with some worldly wisdom included for free. What kid wouldn’t appreciate that?

While gazing out the window with an eight-year-old boy, we were treated to a viewing of a dog taking a crap on the frozen lake. I didn’t look out before I asked, “What do you see out there today?” “There’s a dog pooping.” Marvelous. A lone dog hunched over on the frozen lake and me without my camera. The teachable part of the moment was when we discussed how it would be frozen by the time he walked home. Unfortunately, neither one of us thought of making a ‘poopcicle’ joke at the time.

My wife has convinced me that I haven’t written about my walk to school and dead people. Since the terra firma here isn’t so firma, regular cemeteries won’t work. The ground, when thawed, feels like a sponge when you’re walking on it. So instead of burying someone after they pass away, they stay above ground. And the cemeteries are not a centralized collection of caskets and tombstones. They seem to be placed randomly around the village, including next to walkways. That does make sense, since cemeteries elsewhere are near roads. I walk by three ‘cemeteries’ on my walk to school each morning. One casket is placed so close to the trail that a person can bump into it if you’re not paying attention. The cemeteries in the village are not very big, usually just a half-dozen or so in each group. I don’t know how it is decided where to place a casket, or who decides. I was a little disappointed at Halloween when nobody hid behind these casket boxes and jumped out at people. I think it would be funny even on Thanksgiving.

I am looking forward to spending some time at home. Not having a store in town isn’t as difficult as I thought it would be, but it will be nice to expand my menu once in a while. Although having chili and rice twice a week hasn’t diminished it’s appeal to my taste buds. I sure miss my Beer and Pizza.

11-6-2010

2010-11-06T10:55:00.000-07:00

A polar bear, an Eskimo, and a Rabbi walked into a bar. I have nothing more after that. The strangest part of this scenario is that everyone knows that polar bears and Rabbis are mortal enemies. I’m pretty sure they just accidently showed up at the same time. Maybe the Rabbi and Eskimo showed up together, discussing how to interpret the Talmud into Yupik, and the polar bear just showed up because he was thirsty. Plus, polar bears love nachos. Can you tell nothing exciting happened here the past week?

I had an uneventful Halloween. It turns out there was some candy left over and I had enough to hand out. I even had enough for some to come through twice. Apparently, covering you face with a hood is a costume. The candy I handed out was Whoppers. I hate Whoppers. I ate a whole carton of them once when I was a kid and I got sick. I still have troubles eating them. I had a similar experience with Southern Comfort. I DID NOT give out Southern Comfort as treats.

Winter has settled in here. We have about 6 inches of snow on the ground with more to come. It is getting down in the mid teens at night and mid 20’s during the day. The old timers say that the winters are not very bad. The interior of the state will routinely get into the -40s, but since we are on the Bering Sea, it keeps our temps quite mild. Mild is relative, so I’ll get back to you with the meaning of mild.

It is only the first part of Nov and it stays dark most of the day now. It gets light around 1030 AM and dark at about 7 pm. We lose more than 5mins of daylight each day right now. The sun is also low on the horizon, so it takes a while for the sun to get up and do its job. I haven’t seen it in a week since it has been cloudy for a while.

Our first Friday each month is used for in-service for the staff, so that’s what we did. I do think it is a good reminder for teachers to understand how boring it can be for the kids to sit there and listen to us drone on about something they really don’t care about. I’ve heard that teachers make the worst students. Doctors make the worst patients. Nuclear physicists make the worst pastry chefs. I had a lawyer joke to insert, but I have a brother and a couple of cousins who might get upset. You’d think they would have thicker skin.

If anyone can find a punch line for the joke I started, I’ll include it on my next blog. I’ll try out making this an interactive blog; interactive meaning somebody else writes it and comes up with funny things to post. That’s what teachers call “student centered learning”. Letting the students chose what they want to learn about, and have them look it up. If you can tell a student to use a dictionary to look up a word they want to know how to spell, why can’t you give them an algebra book when they have a question? Even if it is about germs.

10-30-2010

2010-10-30T16:54:00.000-07:00

This past week I had two different and separate events. At the beginning of the week, I went to St. Mary’s, AK for two days of meetings and Friday night I worked as a pinsetter at a Halloween carnival for the school. I probably didn't have to alert you that these are different and separate. All in all it was a good week. Except for the carnival. Man I loathe them things. A child’s enjoyment seems to be directly proportional to an adult’s misery.

My principal wasn’t feeling up to flying, so he sent me to St. Mary’s for a meeting with the local advisory school boards (ASB), the district’s regional school board (RSB) and our principals. Our school district is as large as Oregon, so logistically the district is difficult to run out of one office with one board. Each school in our district, there are 11, has it’s own elected advisory board, which helps to advise their local school. The regional school board works just like school boards in the lower 48. The two-day meeting was to hear from the ASB and try to implement some of the ideas that came out of the meeting.

My favorite part was talking with ASB members who had lived and worked in their villages their entire lives. I learned how some of our schools have programs that include traditional hunting and fishing into their curriculum. Students will spend a week or more in fishing camps, learning how to use traditional skills. Many people here, including my village, continue to live a subsistence life. Unfortunately, my school does not offer the same programs. Listening to people who have lived most of their lives in this area can give you a much better perspective about what the communities are wanting and needing in their schools.

Learning how other schools in the district involve cultural activities makes me think about changing schools in the future. It is common up here for teachers to relocate, and going to a school where trapping beavers is considered homework would be a great experience. Plus, how cool would that look on a resume? “Do you have any special skills for us to consider?” “Why, yes I do. I alone trapped a beaver and made a hat from his fur.” I would then proceed to show off my headwear, inspiring a look of awe on my interviewer’s face. The special skill I currently have on my resume, able to sit motionless on a couch for hours, doesn’t seem to enthuse people the way it does me.

The carnival went off last night without any problems. Other than me being there. To say I am not a fan of crowds is an understatement. The school had ordered the prizes for the games, but they didn’t arrive. The staff pooled our Halloween candy and used that for the game prizes. I’m not sure how that’s going to play when the kids show up at my house for candy and I don’t have any. I guess I’ll just tell them it is a life lesson and that knocking on people’s doors and then demanding they give you candy is just plain rude. That will be my cue to duck. My duty at the carnival was to run the bowling game, which was a plastic bowling set. Bending over and setting pins over and over for three hours is a short, young man’s game. I think I was the only one in the gym who broke a sweat last night. But I made it through the night with only a minimal amount of bitching. The meaning of “minimal “ is subjective I was told.

Having a busy week makes the time go by quickly. We also had our parent/teacher conferences and the end of the quarter. I was able to meet some of the parents I had not met yet, so now I don’t have to pretend to be hard of hearing the next time someone asks me how their child is doing in class. Sometimes I would pretend I was spooked by something behind them and just run away. The back of my legs are sore this morning from squatting and setting pins last night, and my butt is sore from sitting in meetings for two days. But, I know the worst part is yet to come: handing out only advice to the trick-or-treaters. I’ll let you know how that works out.

10-27-2010

2010-10-27T22:43:00.000-07:00

One of the great things about living here is that I get to see things I had never seen before. For example: watching a neighbor butcher a seal in his front yard. I’ve seen many animals get themselves butchered and I’ve even assisted in the chore on occasions, although never to anyone’s approval. To my credit, the animal has never complained.

Watching a seal being butchered is analogous to watching the grass grow, a bit boring. Except that instead of watching life spreading out and flourishing, you’re watching a seal’s guts and blood spill on that same grass. I did learn that the head of a seal is very similar to that of a small dog. Pinnipeds for $400 Alex.

Eating seal is commonplace here, so all of my students have developed a fondness for the taste. I ate it once when I was going to school in Sitka 25 years ago, and the taste still lingers. We were talking in class about how people who live in different places eat distinctive foods. I asked them what they ate and they listed many things, including seal and beluga whale. Of course they asked me what we eat where I’m from. I said “beef.” They weren’t sure what that meant, so I said, “cow.” I could have said “boogers” by their reaction. And pig; “ewwwww!” For the next 10 minutes, they had to sit through a lesson in the righteousness of eating pig meat. Where did they think bacon came from? I pointed out that you can’t buy seal and eggs at Denny’s in Anchorage, but they do have bacon and eggs. They pointed out I wasn’t mentally stable. I guess I should never use Denny's when trying to convince someone of how good a food can be. It is a logical fallacy.

Today we had a pretty good storm. The walk to work this morning reminded me of what is to come for the next six months. Wind and snow in my face will be a good way to wake up. Plus, it will be at my back on the way home as it was tonight. I left before the rest, and asked them if they find a lump beneath the snow, give it a kick to make sure it’s me and not a sack of crap. The nice response would have been, “Of course Clay, we’ll look out for you.” The reply I got was “How can we tell the difference?” It’s that tight knit kind of community we have at the school and it keeps me warm inside.

While I didn’t have seal meat for dinner tonight, I know I will have some soon. I’m not sure if it will be a rite of passage sort of thing or an I ran out of Spam thing. I hope it’s a rite of passage thing because I’ll need the Spam to purge the lingering taste. Yes, you can use Spam to cleanse the palate.

10-23-2010

2010-10-24T11:08:00.000-07:00

Report cards are coming out next week. That statement use to scare me when I was a kid because it usually meant I was in trouble. As soon as I had my ass chewed for the current one, I was already worried about the next one. Now, I have to fill out report cards for my students.

Because of my anxiety dealing with report cards as a student, I am careful about what I’m writing on these cards. “Does not apply himself” seemed to be repeated often on mine. “Shouldn’t eat paste during math” and “ Why does he talk to himself all day?” may have popped up once or twice. High school was tough.

We had a volleyball tournament at our school this weekend. Three other schools came in Friday and we started playing shortly after they arrived. We took a break and served dinner, then resumed until about 10:30. Since there is no place for the teams to stay in town, they each took a classroom and rolled out their sleeping bags. These teams are also co-ed, so we did separate the boys and girls.

My responsibility for the weekend was to help make sure things ran smoothly. The principal was out due to medical issues, so I took his place as the person of responsibility. (You may stop laughing now.)(Seriously, I can hear you.) I actually had to answer people when they asked for permission to do something. “Can we have a dance after the games tonight?” “Can we have seconds on dessert?” I found quickly that the best response is “No”. By answering “yes”, I can see there are other consequences down the road.

I know that makes me an old man by answering that way, but it was already past my bedtime. I have no idea how to put on a dance and I know it’s not a good idea to allow high school kids to plan a dance on the fly. After carefully contemplating the dessert inquiry, I think I made the right choice. We were out of cake. I may have been wrong about the dance. The next morning while the kids were waiting to leave, I heard Johnny Cash sing I walk the line. After investigation, I found a small group of Yupik girls sitting on the floor with an iPod. Maybe they could have pulled off a dance I would enjoy.

Well, it’s 9:30 in the a.m., dark outside and 23 degrees. Plus, I have the NFL on the TV, so I am not motivated to walk the half-mile to school to do my report cards, write my lesson plans for the week, and write two days worth of substitute lesson plans. I’m going out of town for two days, so I may get to a store to buy more potatoes and onions. I ran out this week. My report cards are due tonight by midnight so I better get motivated. Which reminds me of something else that seemed to appear on my report card as a child: “Clay procrastinates on almost every assignment”. Go figure.

10-16-2010

2010-10-16T22:24:00.000-07:00

As I’ve mentioned before, shopping for groceries here is a little different than shopping at most places. When I run out of saffron and fresh charoli seeds for my base sauce, I can’t run down to the corner Whole Foods to refill my pantry. Ok, I made that part up, I have no idea what saffron or charoli are. I think they may have won a Grammy in the late 80’s. Anyways, I’ll start again. When I run out of canned chili or spam, I can’t run down the nearest Safeway to buy enough food for the next three days. I have to get on the internet and order online.

Last summer before I came up here, Monica and I did some shopping and shipped up some of my favorite food. This consisted of canned chili, rice, tuna, spam, rice, macaroni, Velveeta and rice. I had other things, but those are the staples. I did learn to bake bread, so we sent up flour and other bread ingredients. I would list them, but then I’d just be bragging. I had plenty of food to keep me fat and happy for about three months. I’m at two months, so it was time to make an order online.

A few stores and companies will ship orders to the bush. I used Fred Meyer’s online store last week for the first time and found their offerings odd. It wasn’t what they offered, but what they didn’t. I wanted to stock up on butter. Not margarine, but real butter. They didn’t have it listed on their website. I bought eggs, onions, potatoes, and cheese, but no butter. That wasn’t the only thing I really wanted that they didn’t offer online.

They did not offer toilet paper. That’s just mean. They had paper towels, napkins, Kleenex, and baby wipes. It makes no sense. They flaunted a bulk-sized canister of Metamucil, but nothing for the aftermath. At least they could have offered a free Imodium sampler with it.

After I filled out the order, it came out to $165 without the shipping. I didn’t find the prices to be outrageous, but they are probably 15-20% higher than at home. I did not price compare, so I could be off by as much as 60-70%. Unless you count the 5% discount for using my frequent shoppers card. Then they will tack on an additional 20% for handling and add the cost of shipping, depending on the volume and weight. Got all that?

Most everything we get up here is shipped through the post office. The parcel post schedule is very erratic because things come in only if there is room on the airplanes. If you’ve read some of my earlier posts, the airplanes are not large. They are tiny and cannot carry much more than passengers and their baggage. So when a plane is not full, parcel post packages can ride along. That means that a package can sit in Bethel for days because there is no room to send it. Or it can get stuck in Emmonack because there is no room on the plane. It can take 2-6 weeks for an order to arrive, so if you wait too long to place an order, you may have just learned an important lesson.

I’m learning the importance of patience. I also have to learn where and how to order toilet paper. Patience only lasts so long without that. Then it’s panic. I should have learned how to order toilet paper years ago. Instead, I spent my time listening to Saffron and Charoli.

10-10-2010

2010-10-10T17:25:00.000-07:00

Because we have a small school, teachers here have to take on many different responsibilities. We have six general education teachers (K-12), a special education teacher, and a counselor. For some of these jobs, we get a stipend at the end of the year. These could include coaching, student council advisor, or lead teacher. Sometimes you volunteer for one of the positions, and sometimes you are asked.

I was “asked” to be a co-lead teacher. One duty of the lead teacher is to help other teachers with curriculum and other “teacher” stuff. That responsibility would fall to my co-lead teacher since she has the experience. My responsibilities will usually involve chores commonly done by a pack mule, my area of expertise. Luckily we don’t have crops to grow. Yesterday my job was to pickup the volleyball team from the airport.

Calling it an airport stretches the description slightly. It is a gravel runway with a beacon. The only way in and out of the village is by boat, which is not very convenient, and by plane. The plane isn’t very convenient either but it beats walking. The modes of transportation are very limited in the village, so the school is responsible for picking up and dropping off their personnel at the airplane. So, I drove our four-wheeler out to the airport to pick them up.

The volleyball coach called me from Mountain Village, which is where they were playing. She said they were leaving and would be at Nunam Iqua in a half-hour. I put on my new parka and boots, and headed out to get the four-wheeler. I got out to the airport with about 10 minutes until they were suppose to arrive. There were two problems with what happened next. First, the plane they thought was going to Nunam was not going to Nunam. So, they headed back to the school in Mountain Village to wait for their plane. The second part was that they forgot to call me and tell me they would be coming later. But the day was sunny and 35, so it wasn’t too bad to be sitting on a four-wheeler for an hour. Plus my beard, whom I’ve named Awesome, kept my face warm.

When they arrived, we loaded half of them with their bags to take them home. The four-wheeler has room for 3 in the cab, and three in the back with their bags. Two had rides for themselves so I had the rest. I had no idea where these kids lived, so I asked. Like a typical teenager, the response was pointing. We don’t have roads in town; we have boardwalks. Some of the boardwalks are new, but some are still waiting to be rebuilt. There is a crew in town that has been rebuilding the boardwalks, but they will have to finish next summer due to the weather. Nails and broken boards are everywhere, so there is some hazard in driving here. Awesome and I had our work cut out for us.

I was able to see parts of town I had not been to before. Well, I’ve seen them from a distance and now up close. They look exactly like the rest of the houses in town, including mine. The conversation with the students went something like this:

“Where is your house?”

“Back there.”

“Crap. How about yours?”

“Keep going.”

“Yes, but can you be a little bit more specific?”

“Sure, keep going that way.”

“Well, just let me know when I’ve gone past it.”

(nods)

I’m not sure if he was nodding in agreement, or if he was nodding to his iPod. Whichever, they all made it home safely.

So, I’ll be taxing students and other school staff to and from the airport for the rest of the year. When packages arrive on the weekends, I will also be packing them back from the airport, so this may become my new hobby. After 10 years with FedEx, I thought I had moved away from that. So, when you hear people calling me a jackass, you’ll know why. (It’s because I’m doing the job of a pack mule. Right?)

p.s. It snowed today.

10-07-2010

2010-10-08T00:04:00.000-07:00

I’m learning that one of the things that teachers don’t like is having new things thrown at them without notice. I realize that isn’t unique to my profession, but it’s my blog so I get to do the whining. Monday, my class increased by over 7% without anyone mentioning this to me. He just showed up, stood inside the doorway, and looked at me.

I’m not usually comfortable with people staring at me. This was no exception. He looked intently at me as if he was expecting me to do something for him. He stares and he’s needy. What could a child want in a school? I realize it took me way too long to figure out that he was a student, wanting me to find him a desk so he could sit down. The principal said that it wasn’t the school’s policy to surprise teachers with students that way and he apologized. I smiled and asked if I had to keep him since they violated school policy. He’ll fit in fine with the other 14 students.

On a related note, Subway does not sell its foot long for $5 in Alaska. It is a $6 dollar foot long. The good news is that I don’t have to listen to that stupid commercial. The bad news is that the $6 foot long song is worse. This is all true.

As you’ve probably noted, if you have continued to read this far, it has been an uneventful week here. I received my winter gear from Cabela’s just in time for my furnace to quit working. It hasn’t been too cold yet, but it has been freezing at night. Pushing the reset switch seems to make the boiler work again. I apologize for being technical here, but we have to be able to fix our own problems since there is no service tech in the area. When I say we, I mean Joe. I gave him my keys and asked if he could help. God, he must be disgusted with me by now.

The new slippers are treating me well, and my new parka fits well. It is made with real coyote fur, so I hope the wolves don’t snicker. I wanted one with bear fur around the hood and bear teeth for buttons, but realized that would just be mocking the bears. So, coyote will do. Did I mention that it has been dull here this week?

Now, I need to close the curtains; I think someone is staring through the window. I don’t need a roommate.

10-02-2010

2010-10-02T13:36:00.000-07:00

I’m not sure how I could teach without the ability to use a computer. I exploit YouTube and Google on a daily basis. I also discovered that they list curse words on Wikipedia. That’s on my own time, not for making spelling lists. But, if student engagement is more important than content, I may be on to something. %$#@*ing Cuss Words for 4th Graders: proper usages will be on Amazon’s top 100 list for Christmas 2011.

I don’t want people to see my Google history. Some people, judging people, would get the wrong idea. I’ve googled dehydrated whiskey. My brother KC was the one who brought it up to me, so I decided to check it out. I found nothing, other than learning that if you drink too much whiskey, you will become dehydrated the next morning. Who knew? I also googled grow lamp. Yes, I did check and it was not listed back to back with dehydrated whiskey on the history. People who judge may presuppose nefarious reasons for my inquiries.

I used a YouTube video to show the students about base-jumping. After we watched it, the students wrote about what they saw, and whether they would like to try it someday. One of the fourth graders was not happy with me that morning. Most of the students are not shy when it comes to letting you know when they are not happy with you. “You suck!” roughly translates the same here as it does in WA. I thanked him for being honest and reminded him he needed to write a complete sentence letting me know how he would feel about base-jumping. He wrote the sentence “Me and Clay cliff jump and clay die”. Just in case I couldn’t understand what he wrote, he drew me a picture: a parachute crumpled up next to me laying on the ground, complete with x’s for eyes. As you can imagine, I was upset. I had just explained how to use the past tense properly in a verb and he completely ignored me. I thought I had explained it clearly. “It’s Clay Died!!!” But, I held in my anger and walked away.

I’m learning that I can’t force kids to like what I want them to do. If I could, boy this teaching gig would be a hell of a lot easier. But since it isn’t that way, I’m using the premise of outlast. If I can outlast a student, I may get my way. That’s how Monica became my wife. Patience. A half an hour later, the student walked up to me and showed me his reworked sentence. “Me and Clay went cliff jumping and clay did not die." He even changed the picture, this time with me standing, eyes wide open. Both problems were solved with his rewrite. I lived another day in class and in one student’s story. That hasn’t stopped me from continuously googling patience to see if it has an update.

9-25-2010

2010-09-25T16:59:00.000-07:00

Traveling for a school-sponsored event is a big deal for teachers out in the bush. We load up in a small plane and hope we can make it there without crashing. Maybe the last part is just my interpretation of what happens when we get on. Not many airlines have their pilots estimate the weight of each passenger and then arrange them to make sure the weight is distributed correctly. The pilot picks the heaviest first, and then checks down in order by weight, politely pointing to which of the four seats we’ll be sitting in. I’m pretty sure the pilot picked me to sit in the co-pilot’s seat because he liked me, not because he needed some weight up front. Plus, in case of an emergency I could assist him in panicking the rest of the passengers.

We had our teacher’s in-service in Hooper Bay, the district’s largest school with about 400 students. The school is much larger than ours is, which serves about 65 students, K-12. The school is about 5 years old. It was built when their old school burned down, along with most of the teacher’s housing. The town has a grocery store, which mine does not, so I was able to get some groceries. I didn’t have much room in my bag, so I only bought a few items. Here is the list:

1 jar of Ragu: $6.50

2 20oz bottles of Coke: $5.50

2 lbs of onions: $4.50

5 lbs of potatoes: $6

18 carton of eggs: $5.50

2 sausage ropes: $16

One of the reasons I didn’t have a lot of room was because we had to pack our sleeping bags and air mattresses. That almost filled my duffel bag, so I went ahead and threw in some clean clothes for the two days. We slept in classrooms, rooming with people who didn’t know us. Or didn’t know that I snore. Two teachers from my school and I were sharing a room with another guy who we didn’t know. He did not seem to be interested in knowing us either, since he resisted any attempt at small talk from each of us. The most he spoke was when he was leaving the room at 2am, mumbling something about not being able to sleep in this racket. My two other roommates pointed out that the racket he was referring to was my snoring. I can add that guy to the list of many others who do not enjoy hearing from me. I also drove out a co-teacher last spring in our cabin during science camp, citing the need to sleep for his reason. Monica must be getting some good sleeping right now.

We sat through seminars both days, each one about different strategies on teaching reading skills to students. District wide, our reading scores on the state assessment have been low, so that’s where the concentration is right now. It was good to learn about new tools to use in the classroom. It was also good to hear from other teachers, many new just like me, talk about what struggles each of us are going through. It is true that misery loves company, because there seemed to be a lot of misery. But, that is why we have these gatherings, and I think I learned some ideas to try in my room.

The plane ride home had us facing a strong head wind, so it took us about a half-hour longer than the flight there. The view was great, with no clouds at all. I did feel a bit apprehensive once when I saw a flock of geese that looked very close beneath us. I glanced at Sully but he seemed unconcerned, so I guess it was ok. I was a big help in the co-pilot seat, with the fact we didn’t crash as being the evidence. I understand that correlation does not equate to causation, but in this case, I’ll let it slide. Plus, he picked me first.

9-22-2010

2010-09-22T08:23:00.001-07:00

This post will be brief and not very well thought out. I’m sure you’re thinking, “How is that different from the rest?” Haha. Now you're wondering why I’m having a conversation with imaginary people, people who are gently mocking me. I don’t have an answer to that, so quit asking. I’m trying to post a blog here.

I’m leaving this afternoon for Hooper Bay, a town south of here, for two days of teacher in-service. It sounds like it will be a nice, relaxing place to collectively think and discuss how we can serve our students better. But it is another village; similar to the one I’m in, so there is no resort for us to stay. The fine dinning will be at the school cafeteria, and as for our sleeping arrangements, we have packed our sleeping bags and air mattresses and will be sleeping in classrooms. This will be like summer camp, sans the initiation practices. I hope I don’t have to eat another frog. Ok, I didn’t have to eat it, but when curiosity takes over….

I’ll be back Friday evening, so I won’t be away from here too long. Hooper Bay does have a small grocery store, so hopefully I’ll be able to grab a few things to bring back. And to answer the question I’m hearing; no, it’s a dry village too. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a blog to write.

9-18-2010

2010-09-18T18:12:00.000-07:00

One of the nice things about a small school is the ability to plan whole school outings without a lot of preparation on the part of the staff. Ok, no planning on my part. The high school science/math teacher did the planning and did just fine without any input from me. I wonder why she didn’t ask me for any help, but maybe it was because I was avoiding her knowing that she may ask for my help. Whatever the reason, I’m satisfied it’s not my fault. Our outing was to go out and do some berry picking. Many types of berries grow out in the tundra and they are the only fresh fruit that grows up here. Most of the students have gone berry picking with their families many times.

Berry picking is not a dangerous endeavor. However, picking berries near an airport without a reliable schedule can be. So of course, students ran straight for the airport. As they say up here, “The berries are always more plentiful on the other side of the runway”. If there was a giant, spinning wheel made of broken glass shards and rusty nails, (I’m not sure why there would be one of those) kids would walk as close to it as they could. Well, some would walk closer than they should. This is why we have rules and procedures keeping us from doing fun things. I would love to stand and watch that wheel, but for the safety and survival of others, we must stay back. Ok, back to the airport. When the students were told to stay on this side of the airport, they seemed angry that they couldn’t pick berries where they wanted to. Some of their complaining was drowned out by an unexpected airplane. I suggested that they could come out after school and pick berries over there, since they wouldn’t be under the strict control of the school. They just looked at me like I was recommending they listen to that new polka album.

Overall, the berry picking was a huge success. The students spent two hours talking, playing, and picking a few berries. The sky was clear and it was about 55 degrees out on the tundra. Some of the older students were complaining about how hot it was outside, and they asked how I could wear a jacket in this heat. They knew the answer, as it was implied by the tone in their voice (wimp). The older students did do a great job of helping the little ones in picking. They shared what they picked, because my students were trying to pick the most berries in the class. We didn’t have a trophy, but berry picking bragging rights carry a lot of weight. In case you were wondering, Naomi picked the most: 1440 cranberries.

We used the berries the next day in our math lesson. The high school students came in the classroom and helped us count and weigh our berries. The most amazing part of this was that after class was over, there were no berries squished on the floor. With over 5,500 berries counted, not one made it under somebody’s shoe. My class works very hard on respecting their new school and taking care of it. The older ones in my class get on the little ones if they drop a piece of paper on the floor. The grossest part was that some of them made juice out of the cranberries while they were in the Ziploc bags. (The berries, not the kids) They then drank it from the corner of the Ziploc bag. But still, no mess.

I’m sure Miss Fina will plan more outings for us since this one was such a success, even without my input. I’ll remind her of that if she does ask for my help. Good luck to her on finding me.

9-15-10

2010-09-15T20:11:00.001-07:00

You never really know hate until it is directed at you. On my way home from school, I was called a stink-butt. You never think it can happen to you; that it happens in other neighborhoods, to other people. You can rationalize it by thinking, “Yes, kindergarteners can be mean”, but in the end, it still cuts the same.

If you have read some of my past posts, I had described an encounter with two kindergarten girls. Instead of leaving my porch when asked (politely I might add), one began to yell at me while the other chewed on a nail sticking out my porch door jam. Yeah, you know, what any kid would do. Well, they must have been holding in their anger and hate for the past few weeks, and let it go today. They followed me home from school today. Follow can also be defined as: “cling to a larger person on his way home to eat dinner”. When I didn’t extend an invitation to them for dinner, they lashed out with that hateful word. The Spam and Ramen noodles didn’t give me the joy it normally does.

Other than that, it has been an uneventful couple of days. I’m coming down with a cold, so I have that going for me. I never remember if I’m suppose to starve a cold and feed a fever or the other way around. I cover all bases and feed any illness. Botulism? Feed it. Sprained ankle? Feed it. A little sad after watching 30 Rock? Ok, you get what I mean. Since we have no substitute teachers here, I guess I’ll stick it out.

The whole school will be going berry picking tomorrow. There are wild cranberries in the tundra, and I guess the picking is fine. I’m looking forward to getting the class outside for the afternoon. The weather is supposed to be nice, about 55, so it will be fun. We’ll count and weigh the berries on Friday for our math lesson. That’s about as far as I’ve planned. I’m not sure when the eating is going to happen, but I’m sure it will.

The kindergarten is not going to be going on the berry picking expedition, so it will be safe. I’ll hold my head high put this night behind me. Anyways, I’ll have some berries to help ease the pain.

9-11-2010

2010-09-11T17:29:00.000-07:00

I’m spending my Saturday afternoon like most people in Nunam Iqua, watching the Sooners beat Florida State. It is almost like being at home, except for the fact this a dry village, so my beverage of choice is tap water. And the time I spend with my wife is on Skype instead of her waiting on me hand and foot. I had a Spam sandwich, which I made from bread I baked last weekend and Spam that was caught wherever they live. Living the High Life.

Since my wife could see me on Skype, she made reference to the graying of my beard. After extensive research, I conclude and will maintain the reason is because my beard is blending with its environment. The only, and I stress only, flaw in that reasoning that my hair has not begun to re-grow in response to the impending cold. My best response is that maybe it’ll be a mild winter.

Last night a group of high school students, Natural Helpers, had an open gym for the community and it was my turn to help supervise. The Natural Helpers are nominated by their peers as students they would most go to in a time of crisis. Teen suicide is much higher here than the national average and this group receives training on recognizing when there is a problem with another student. They host a night of games for the community every couple of weeks so the kids can have a warm place to hang out and play. They also get to go on a trip at the end of the year. They were able to go to Hawaii last year, so they have an incentive to participate in the program. I think they receive their funds from a grant. However it is being paid for, I think it is a good organization to learn leadership skills and hopefully help someone when they need it. Plus, they are able to let kids have some fun on a Friday night.

We had our first birthday party on Friday. We had two birthdays, so we watched a movie, complete with popcorn and juice. Monica sent a box with microwave popcorn and it arrived just in time. (Thank you honey) They must have been practicing for the time they get to go to a theater, because I have never seen one cup of juice compel so many kids to use the bathroom. The kids are fond of lying on the floor when they are watching a movie. They kind of bunch up together, like they are huddling for warmth. One student asked if she could use the bathroom, and when the other students heard the door shut, the rest of the class popped up like a cluster of gophers. We resumed the movie after they all returned.

Now that the Sooners squeaked out a win against FSU, there seems to be plenty of other choices to keep me occupied on the sporting front. I don’t think I have to cook tonight because of an invitation to another teacher’s house for dinner. I cooked last weekend, so we try to spread it around. God I hope it’s not Spam.

Happy Birthday Lynn!

09-08-2010

2010-09-08T21:01:00.000-07:00

After the three-day weekend, the kids were happy to be back in school. The weather is the same 50 degrees. Sometimes it is windy and rainy, and other times it’s rainy and windy. But mostly windy and rainy. The change up is nice. The weather isn’t too bad except when it is blowing in my face. Which is why I’m not shaving until I go home for Christmas. Ok, I’m not shaving because I’m lazy and have an aversion to dragging a sharp piece of steel across my face.

I want to mention that there have been several very nice comments posted at this blog. I will also clear up some apparent confusion; there will be no payment for kind remarks. But I do appreciate them. I’m getting free advice from my favorite principal in New Zealand (Don McLean), but I’m still searching for the definition of biffing.

I had been without water since last Thursday, but Joe Strongheart worked hard and fixed the problem. Joe is the maintenance man at the school and even though it wasn’t his responsibility to fix the problem, he did anyways. The crew who was working on it left last week for a two-week break, so I’m very glad that Joe would take the time to get me back in water. I also traded some plastic totes that I used to move my stuff up here to Joe and his wife for about 3 lbs of moose meat. I made bread and moose-chili this weekend. I had plenty left over, so I’ve been eating chili every night this week.

The town is also rebuilding the boardwalk throughout the village. The land is almost a marshland out here since we are on the Yukon River delta, so the ground is low quality for walking. Even where it is dry, it is like walking on a giant sponge. The boardwalks have little driveways that run right up to people’s houses. Most people have ATVs for the summer and snowmobiles (snow machines) for the winter. I’m going to just hoof it this year. It would be expensive to order one for this winter so I’ll do it like the old timers have done for years: lots of bitching and complaining.

The kids and their teacher are getting to know each other a little better each day. They mock my attempt at a beard and remind me “That’s not how Grover did it”. Grover was their teacher last year. I would like to ask them to cut me a break because I’m winging it here, but I smile and tell them “I’m not Grover”. They give me a confused look and tell me they know I’m not Grover, and ask why I’m shouting. Grover is probably wondering why I always give him a dirty look in the hall. He’s teaching social studies to 6-12 grades.

Now that I have water, I can get my dishes and clothes washed, admire my beard and eat another bowl of chili. I also still have time to figure out how to biff my textbooks without getting fired.

9-5-10

2010-09-05T16:42:00.000-07:00

The first full week of school is over and if I keep learning at the same pace, I’ll be a genius by Christmas. At times, it seems that new information is made up just for my frustration. Since everything here is new to me, there is a lot to absorb. I know that first week was my hardest, so I should hit my stride by mid-May.

The most difficult subject for me to teach is the subject I like the best: social studies. It is tricky to find prior knowledge with the students about community when all of the examples the text/workbooks give is about things the students have never seen. We have no law enforcement or a fire department in the village, so the chapter about city services and how they work together drew blank stares. Or maybe I was boring them into unconsciousness. When we talked about business services that citizens provide, I heard disbelief. Surely there could not be a store that sold only shoes. They are used to the only “store” here in town, where they sell only pop and candy. Well, mostly pop and candy. They do sell toilet paper at Rockefeller prices, but I suspect they can set it at any price, because if you have time to try to negotiate the price, you probably don’t need it that badly. They should offer bran muffins with the toilet paper, kind of a two-for-one deal.

Most of the students have not been to a town larger than 3,000 people, so they have been spared the spectacle of a large town. The cost to fly to Bethel, the closest town that offers services, is $450 round trip. The only road in our town leads to the dump. This town is isolated not only by geography but by poverty. Flying to Bethel is out of the question for most families because of the cost. Every student in the school qualifies for free breakfast and lunch at the school. Unfortunately for some students, these are the only meals they’ll get for the day. One of my students has worn the same clothes for the seven days we have had class. I doubt they have been washed in that time. Alcohol and poverty affect most students at the school in one way or another. The problems most of these students deal with daily dwarf my petty troubles of temporarily having no water. I have food and the means to get water into my house. They have to rely on others for their survival. Sometimes the ones they rely on cannot provide what they need.

I also want to emphasize there are many families that are doing what they can with what they have. They provide the best they can for their families. There is no economy in this town, so those who fish in the summer must make their money at that time. If they don’t, it can be along winter. Some people work for the village, school, post office, or electric company. A large diesel generator in town provides electricity. There are no individual businesses in town. Well, legal businesses. Alcohol is either made or bootlegged into the village, both of which are illegal. The encouraging factor is that the kids in my class want to be in school. A few may not really care about what is being taught, but they want to be there. Most really want to learn and I don’t want to let them down. The majority of families want their children to learn and will support their students in their education.

One student was yawning the other morning, so I asked her why she was so tired. She said she stayed up until 2am watching movies. (Kids stay up late around here) I asked her what she was watching and she said “Scary Movie 2”. I’m not sure I’m happy about the Wayans Brothers being a cultural compass for 5th graders here. So I did what I could and found YouTube videos of rodeo wrecks for them to watch. Most of the students were not sure what a rodeo was, so we watched and wrote about the videos.

I was able to make some bread this morning, so I can survive without running water. I’m able to get water from my neighbor for my kitchen and I can use the shower and the bathroom at the school. It is a ½-mile walk, so I skipped the bran muffin this morning.

8-29-2010

2010-08-29T12:35:00.000-07:00

“If you want poop to run down an eight-foot pipe, you need water.” It does make sense when you spend some time to think about it. This quote came from an article in the Anchorage Daily News. The article was about an engineer, named Baron, who worked over the past 20 years to provide sewer and water to houses in rural Alaska. The quote was his, about how he determined the best way to “move the poop” out of the house. You may wonder why I included this in my blog. First, the village where I live, Nunam Iqua, is just now getting running water and a sewer system installed. I can appreciate how important this is to the community. Second, I believe they teach people in journalism classes that if you can utilize the word poop in the first sentence, you will grab the reader’s attention. That may be just the University of Nebraska, I’ll have to look into that. And third, I think the word poop is funny.

The first week of school is over and it went well. We spent our first two days going over the classroom procedures and getting to know each other. The school serves breakfast at 8:30, but many students were standing outside my windows, banging and waving. They were excited to start. Luckily, it wasn’t raining or cold outside, so they waited the hour and a half to get into the school. The weather here has been normal according to the people who notice such things. The clouds conceal the blue, and the temperature stays between 45-50, both day and night. We have had some rain, but only at a mizzle.

I have 13 kids in my classroom: grades 3, 4, and 5. I realize that is not very many, but I’m learning how to teach to three different grade levels at the same time. I am fortunate to have a full time aide in my class, so I will be able to have her stay with one group while I work with another. Now, I just have to figure out what I’ll do with that third group. Teachers do it all of the time up here, so I’ll adjust. The students are very happy to be in school and want to learn. It’s a very comforting feeling to look up and see so many toothless smiles.

In most villages, the students call their teacher by his/her first name. This makes it much easier for me, since responding to “Mr. Miller!” is difficult for me to remember. My students in Cashmere always called my name twice, since they knew I didn’t respond the first time. My wife does something similar, but the volume increases greatly the second time. So does my reaction.

Now that the first week is over, I’m working on week two. I’ll have five days to prepare for, instead of two. Since they appear to be attentive, I won’t be able to fake my way through it. Next weekend will be a three-day weekend, and I have a feeling I will need it. Having so many little people depend on me is something new, but it is a responsibility I want. I just need to make sure I have enough material to keep them learning, and not give too much of time on their own. When I asked what would it be like if we didn’t have rules in our class, one student said “I take a chair and bop someone with it”. I believe her, so I took her chair away. Not really, but I’m keeping my eyes open.

Poop. (See?)

8-24-2010

2010-08-24T23:17:00.000-07:00

Ok, I know it’s not the end of the week, but I wanted to share with everyone that I now have full water pressure. Apparently, there was a situation somewhere up line from my house. Up line from other teachers’ houses. The men working on the waterline couldn’t tell me why the water pressure in my house, in addition to others’ houses, was so low that I couldn’t get any water out of my shower head. “There’s no telling what could be causing that.” Well, they found out what was causing that today and solved the problem. I don’t want to bore you all the technical plumbing terminology, but it seems that they have a device called a valve. And by positioning the valve in a certain position (open), the flow of the water will be at its greatest force. They must have missed the “lefty loosey righty tighty” seminar. The good part is that all of this work is because the village is now getting sewer and water to all of the houses. No more honey buckets, so I guess I should not be so nitpicky.

I haven’t seen Stanley for the past two days. I don’t think Stanley is an early morning person. I have been leaving my house at 6:30, headed to school so I can have a shower before the workday. (See above) I have not seen anyone around here at that time. It is still dark, mainly because we are on the western edge of the Alaskan time zone.

I did have two little first graders come over last evening, asking if they could visit. I’m not sure what we would have talked about. They were climbing all over my front porch, conversing with me from my window. I told them I wasn’t entertaining visitors and they needed to climb off my railing and be on their way. One told me “No, you stinky”, the other began to bite a three-inch nail sticking out of my porch door jam. Biting is not accurate, since she was missing her two front teeth. When I asked her why she was chewing on that nail, she responded by biting the nail again. I pulled the little girl off the nail (not a phrase I ever anticipated writing) and sent them on their way. I’m not sure where their way was, but they weren’t going to get hurt on my porch.

Now that my house has water pressure, I will be able to shower here in the morning. Since I don’t have to leave so early, maybe Stanley will be up for a walk in the morning. I just hope I don’t have to pull him off a nail sticking out of my house. And no, I don’t have a hammer. Quit judging.

08-22-2010

2010-08-22T12:29:00.000-07:00

I know it would sound cool to start this off with an anecdote about me fighting a bear. I’m uncomfortable with that, because I’m not sure how that scenario would play out. I’m thinking less fighting and more running and screaming.
I landed in Nunam Iqua, AK Thursday at noon. It was a nice flight from Bethel to Kotlik to Emmonak and then to Nunam. There are no international airports for these villages, just gravel runways. I sat in the co-pilot seat of the small Cessna from Emmonak to Nunam. The pilot looked nervously at me while I pretended to fly the plane before take-off. Apparently, it was the airplane sounds I was making, so I took my hands off the instruments and pretended to be asleep.

The walk from the airport to the school is about a quarter mile. There are no cars or pickups in town, because of no roads. There are boardwalks that run throughout town, which are used for walking and for ATVs. In the quarter mile walk, I was greeted by a half-dozen children asking me “Are you my teacher? Are you Clayton?” News travels fast around here. I’m just wondering what other information they have on me.

Stanley keeps me company on my walks from my house to the school. The weather has been nice since I arrived, no rain and about 60 during the day, so the kids are all outside. Stanley isn’t sure what grade he’ll be in next year, but he told me he’s ten and he wants to be in my class. I said, “I bet you tell all the teachers that”, and he smiles and says “Yeah”.

I have a two-bedroom house that is mostly furnished. I was told that I had to bring my own kitchenwares, but the teacher who lived here last year didn’t take much with him. He even left a big TV for me so I’m set. I have satellite TV and internet access here at my house, so it’s kind of like living in WA. Except it is illegal to possess alcohol and I can’t order a pizza.

The custodians, Joe and his wife Dominica, have hauled all of my boxes of food and other things to my house. All told, it must have been at least 500 lbs. We have no store in town, so everything I eat has to be shipped in here. I bought a cooler, filled it full of meat, and checked it on as luggage so I have some frozen meat. Without Joe and Dominica, I’d still be dragging my stuff from the school to my house. In case I have not mentioned it, it’s a half mile away.

I start work on Monday and the students show up on Thursday. I guess I should get started figuring out what I’m supposed to be doing in the classroom. I have 3/4/5 grades, so I hope they’re not too hard on me. Maybe Stanley will know what to do and I can sit in the co-pilot’s seat and make teacher noises. I hope he doesn’t mind.

Why that name?

2010-08-20T12:29:00.000-07:00

Ok, first about the name of the blog. Monica told me that Ignorance Without Arrogance is itself an arrogant statement. I told her to keep quiet because I knew what I was doing. She thought Irony With Arrogance would be better. My reason for the name is because, as others have stated, there seems to be a connection with the more ignorant people are about a subject, the more arrogant they are about that subject. Also, S#!t My Students Say might be a bit too much.
Because I am ignorant about most things, I'll try to keep the arrogance out. This is just a forum for me to keep people who are interested updated on what I'm doing and what it is like to live in the Alaska bush and teach in their schools. I'll include pictures and some video. Uploading video takes a long time, so I won't do too much.

Later,
Clay